A key challenge to ensuring the rapid transition of robotic systems from the industrial sector to more ubiquitous applications is the development of algorithms that can guarantee safe operation while in close proximity to humans. Motion planning and control methods, for instance, must be able to certify safety while operating in real-time in arbitrary environments and in the presence of model uncertainty. This paper proposes Wrench Analysis for Inertial Transport using Reachability (WAITR), a certifiably safe motion planning and control framework for serial link manipulators that manipulate unsecured objects in arbitrary environments. WAITR uses reachability analysis to construct over-approximations of the contact wrench applied to unsecured objects, which captures uncertainty in the manipulator dynamics, the object dynamics, and contact parameters such as the coefficient of friction. An optimization problem formulation is presented that can be solved in real-time to generate provably-safe motions for manipulating the unsecured objects. This paper illustrates that WAITR outperforms state of the art methods in a variety of simulation experiments and demonstrates its performance in the real-world.

翻译：确保机器人系统从工业领域快速过渡到更广泛应用的一个关键挑战，是开发能够在人类附近保证安全操作的算法。例如，运动规划与控制方法必须在任意环境中实时运行且存在模型不确定性的情况下，能够认证安全性。本文提出基于可达性的惯性传输扳手分析（WAITR），一种针对在任意环境中操作非固定物体的串联关节机械臂的可认证安全运动规划与控制框架。WAITR利用可达性分析构建施加于非固定物体的接触扳手的超近似，该超近似捕捉了机械臂动力学、物体动力学以及接触参数（如摩擦系数）中的不确定性。本文提出一种可实时求解的优化问题公式，以生成操作非固定物体的可证明安全运动。通过多种仿真实验，本文表明WAITR优于现有最先进方法，并在实际环境中展示了其性能。