Learning to Grasp the Ungraspable with Emergent Extrinsic Dexterity

December 14, 2022

In this work, we develop a system based on reinforcement learning (RL) to address these limitations. We present a system with model-free RL that successfully achieves this task using a simple gripper with extrinsic dexterity. The policy learns emergent behaviors of pushing the object against the wall to rotate and then grasp it without additional reward terms on extrinsic dexterity. We discuss important components of the system including the design of the RL problem, multi-grasp training and selection, and policy generalization with automatic curriculum. It demonstrates dynamic and contact-rich motions with a simple gripper that generalizes across objects with various size, density, surface friction, and shape with a 78% success rate.

The source of this news is from Carnegie Mellon University, The Robotics Institute