Paper ID: 2307.07975

Pseudo-rigid body networks: learning interpretable deformable object dynamics from partial observations

Shamil Mamedov, A. René Geist, Jan Swevers, Sebastian Trimpe

Accurately predicting deformable linear object (DLO) dynamics is challenging, especially when the task requires a model that is both human-interpretable and computationally efficient. In this work, we draw inspiration from the pseudo-rigid body method (PRB) and model a DLO as a serial chain of rigid bodies whose internal state is unrolled through time by a dynamics network. This dynamics network is trained jointly with a physics-informed encoder that maps observed motion variables to the DLO's hidden state. To encourage the state to acquire a physically meaningful representation, we leverage the forward kinematics of the PRB model as a decoder. We demonstrate in robot experiments that the proposed DLO dynamics model provides physically interpretable predictions from partial observations while being on par with black-box models regarding prediction accuracy. The project code is available at: this http URL

Submitted: Jul 16, 2023