학술논문

Geometric Fabrics: Generalizing Classical Mechanics to Capture the Physics of Behavior
Document Type
Periodical
Source
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters IEEE Robot. Autom. Lett. Robotics and Automation Letters, IEEE. 7(2):3202-3209 Apr, 2022
Subject
Robotics and Control Systems
Computing and Processing
Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems
Fabrics
Geometry
Measurement
Mechanical systems
Damping
Mathematical models
Bending
Dynamics
Optimization and Optimal Control
Language
ISSN
2377-3766
2377-3774
Abstract
Classical mechanical systems are central to controller design in energy shaping methods of geometric control. However, their expressivity is limited by position-only metrics and the intimate link between metric and geometry. Recent work on Riemannian Motion Policies (RMPs) has shown that shedding these restrictions results in powerful design tools, but at the expense of theoretical stability guarantees. In this work, we generalize classical mechanics to what we call geometric fabrics, whose expressivity and theory enable the design of systems that outperform RMPs in practice. Geometric fabrics strictly generalize classical mechanics forming a new physics of behavior by first generalizing them to Finsler geometries and then explicitly bending them to shape their behavior while maintaining stability. We develop the theory of fabrics and present both a collection of controlled experiments examining their theoretical properties and a set of robot system experiments showing improved performance over a well-engineered and hardened implementation of RMPs, our current state-of-the-art in controller design.