Contour Based Object-Compliant Shape Control

Abstract

Shape control strategies seek to bring deformable objects towards a desired target shape. However, conventional methods focus on reaching the target shape without considering the extent to which the object is deformed during the control process. Control actions may generate unnecessary deformations and thus, increase the possibility of object over-stressing and failure. In this letter, we tackle the problem of vision-based object-compliant shape control (OCSC) with focus on 2D contours of texture-less objects. We propose a novel shape control framework that makes use of a multi-scale analysis of the contour's length and curvature to reduce the amount of deformation objects need to undergo during the shape control task. We evaluate our approach with simulations and experiments.