TrajectoTree: Trajectory Optimization Meets Tree Search for Planning Multi-contact Dexterous Manipulation

Understand

Dexterous manipulation tasks often require contact switching, where fingers make and break contact with the object.

• We propose a method that plans trajectories for dexterous manipulation tasks involving contact switching using contact-implicit trajectory optimization (CITO) augmented with a high-level discrete contact sequence planner.
• We first use the high-level planner to find a sequence of finger contact switches given a desired object trajectory.
• With this contact sequence plan, we impose additional constraints in the CITO problem.