This package implements an ergodic controller on point clouds and it is the supplementary material of the paper "Tactile Ergodic Coverage on Curved Surfaces"

Link to the paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/2402.04862

[Google colab version]

Paper webpage including interactive plots and real-world experiment videos:

https://sites.google.com/view/tactile-ergodic-control/

Table of Contents

Notebooks:

• tactile_ergodic_control.ipynb

  • A notebook describing the whole method from start to finish with references and equations.

• Google colab version you can play with this without installing anything to your computer:

  • https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1WFfS4oKQ089wCDgMpZatVTfI6JyIskCY?usp=sharing

Utilities:

• pointcloud_utils.py
  • Point cloud operations such as read/write kNN queries, gradient computation, etc.
• plotting_utils.py
  • A collection of plotting utility functions used by the notebooks.
• virtual_agents.py
  • Classes for the first and second order virtual agents.

Point clouds:

• Stanford Bunny from the original dataset bun270.ply, 'X' image projected to it using set_point_cloud_target.ipynb
• A random cup we found in the office and recorded using our setup, 'X' image projected to it using set_point_cloud_target.ipynb
• A plate from IKEA, recorded using our setup (it includes the exploration target by itself)

Dependencies

To compute the discrete Laplacian on point clouds (and also meshes if you want) robust_laplacian: https://github.com/nmwsharp/robust-laplacians-py

@article{Sharp:2020:LNT,
  author={Nicholas Sharp and Keenan Crane},
  title={{A Laplacian for Nonmanifold Triangle Meshes}},
  journal={Computer Graphics Forum (SGP)},
  volume={39},
  number={5},
  year={2020}
}

For geometric algebra operations: pygafro: https://gitlab.idiap.ch/tloew/gafro

@article{loewGeometricAlgebraOptimal2023,
  title = {Geometric {{Algebra}} for {{Optimal Control}} with {{Applications}} in {{Manipulation Tasks}}},
  author = {L\"ow, Tobias and Calinon, Sylvain},
  date = {2023},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Robotics},
  doi = {10.1109/TRO.2023.3277282}
}

For basic point cloud operations (another library can be easily used instead): open3d: https://www.open3d.org

For plotting and point cloud visualizations: plotly: https://plotly.com

For sparse matrix operations: scipy: https://scipy.org

For linear algebra operations: numpy: https://numpy.org

Copyright and License

Please see the LICENSE for more information.

Contact: [email protected]