A Mollification Scheme for Task and Motion Planning

Task and motion planning is one of the key problems in robotics today. It is often formulated as a discrete task allocation problem combined with continuous motion planning. Many existing approaches to TAMP involve explicit descriptions of task primitives that cause discrete changes in the kinematic relationship between the actor and the objects. In this work we propose an alternative approach to TAMP which does not involve explicit enumeration of task primitives. Instead, the actions are represented implicitly as part of the solution to a nonlinear optimization problem. We focus on decision making for robotic manipulators, specifically for pick and place tasks, and show several possible extensions. We explore the efficacy of the model through a number of simulated experiments involving multiple robots, objects and interactions with the environment.