Abstract
Autonomous manipulation of granular media, such as sand, is crucial for applications in construction, excavation, and additive manufacturing. However, shaping granular materials presents unique challenges due to their high-dimensional configuration space and complex dynamics. Traditional rule-based approaches struggle with these complexities, requiring extensive engineering efforts. Reinforcement learning (RL) offers a promising alternative by enabling agents to learn adaptive manipulation strategies through trial and error. Although RL has been successfully applied to rigid and deformable object manipulation, its application to granular media has received little attention. Thus, it has remained an open research question how to define the compact observations for the large configuration space and design an effective reward function. In this work, we present an RL framework that enables a robotic arm with a cubic end-effector to shape granular media into desired structures. Our results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed reward formulation for the training of visual policies that manipulate granular media including their real-world deployment.
Simulation Deployment
Our approach demonstrates reliable manipulation of the granular medium with a wide range of goal shapes. In the end of each run, the desired goal shape is visible within the medium. The videos show the simulated render view (left), the reconstructed height map (center), and the goal height map (right).
Real World Deployment
Deployed to the real robotic system, our approach successfully creates the desired goal shape in the granular medium. The video shows an external camera view (left), the reconstructed height map (center), and the goal height map (right).
Qualitative Experimental Results
Explore the resulting shapes within the goal area of the granular medium. The goal height maps (blue) and the achieved height maps (gray) are rendered as point clouds. You can rotate, zoom, and pan to examine the structure from any angle.