Precise robotic manipulation skills are desirable in many industrial settings, reinforcement learning (RL) methods hold the promise of acquiring these skills autonomously. In this paper, we explicitly consider incorporating operational space force/torque information into reinforcement learning; this is motivated by humans heuristically mapping perceived forces to control actions, which results in completing high-precision tasks in a fairly easy manner. Our approach combines RL with force/torque information by incorporating a proper operational space force controller; where we also explore different ablations on processing this information. Our method can be used in both inherently compliant and non-compliant robots; we tackle two specific use-cases: 1)deformable object manipulation 2)the open-source Siemens Robot Learning Challenge; both of them requires precise and delicate force-controlled robotic behavior. Video results are available at: https://sites.google.com/berkeley.edu/rl-robotic-assembly/.
Title
Reinforcement Learning for Robotic Assembly with Force Control
Published
2020-02-26
Full Collection Name
Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences Technical Reports
Other Identifiers
EECS-2020-20
Type
Text
Extent
30 p
Archive
The Engineering Library
Usage Statement
Researchers may make free and open use of the UC Berkeley Library’s digitized public domain materials. However, some materials in our online collections may be protected by U.S. copyright law (Title 17, U.S.C.). Use or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use (Title 17, U.S.C. § 107) requires permission from the copyright owners. The use or reproduction of some materials may also be restricted by terms of University of California gift or purchase agreements, privacy and publicity rights, or trademark law. Responsibility for determining rights status and permissibility of any use or reproduction rests exclusively with the researcher. To learn more or make inquiries, please see our permissions policies (https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/about/permissions-policies).