Differentiable Physics and Stable Modes for Tool-Use and Manipulation Planning

Abstract

We consider the problem of sequential manipulationand tool-use planning in domains that include physical interac-tions such as hitting and throwing. The approach integrates aTask And Motion Planning formulation with primitives that ei-ther impose stable kinematic constraints or differentiable dynam-ical and impulse exchange constraints at the path optimizationlevel. We demonstrate our approach on a variety of physicalpuzzles that involve tool use and dynamic interactions. We thencompare manipulation sequences generated by our approach tohuman actions on analogous tasks, suggesting future directionsand illuminating current limitations.