Mini-game
Rod threading
Shape control computes robot motions that deform an object toward a target, with applications in cable routing, food handling and surgery. Here two robots hold an elastic rod in a vertical plane. Each approaching gap is generated from a reachable equilibrium shape. Deform the rod to pass through it. Show solution runs the tutorial's shape-servoing loop, which estimates the rod response to gripper motion and updates that estimate online.
Rod threading
Right robot joints
Drag a gripper to translate it; drag the ring above it to rotate it. Drag the rod to translate both grippers. Keyboard: arrow keys move the selected gripper, Q and E rotate it, Space switches gripper, P pauses.
- Clean passThe whole rod is inside the gap: +100.
- Close passAt least 75% of the rod is inside the gap: +40.
- CollisionLess than 75% of the rod is inside the gap: one life lost.
Each gap is generated from the rod's equilibrium shape at reachable gripper poses, then widened by the current clearance. It can therefore be matched exactly. After each pass, the clearance decreases and the panels move faster.
Related papers
- I. Cuiral-Zueco and G. López-Nicolás, “Data-Driven Shape Trajectory Control of Deformable Linear Objects,” IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, pp. 1–12, 2026. doi:10.1109/TMECH.2026.3715312
- A. Caporali, I. Cuiral-Zueco, G. López-Nicolás and G. Palli, “Robotic perception and manipulation of deformable linear objects: A survey,” The International Journal of Robotics Research, 2026. doi:10.1177/02783649261432253
- I. Cuiral-Zueco and G. López-Nicolás, “Multi-scale elastic contour mapping for deformable object shape control,” Robotics and Autonomous Systems, vol. 194, p. 105134, 2025. doi:10.1016/j.robot.2025.105134
- I. Cuiral-Zueco and G. López-Nicolás, “Time Consistent Surface Mapping for Deformable Object Shape Control,” IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, vol. 22, pp. 11099–11111, 2025. doi:10.1109/TASE.2025.3529180
- I. Cuiral-Zueco and G. López-Nicolás, “Taxonomy of Deformable Object Shape Control,” IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 9, no. 10, pp. 9015–9022, 2024. doi:10.1109/LRA.2024.3455770
- I. Cuiral-Zueco and G. López-Nicolás, “Multiscale Procrustes-Based 3-D Shape Control,” IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 1738–1748, 2024. doi:10.1109/TMECH.2023.3325934
- I. Cuiral-Zueco, Y. Karayiannidis and G. López-Nicolás, “Contour Based Object-Compliant Shape Control,” IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 8, no. 8, pp. 5164–5171, 2023. doi:10.1109/LRA.2023.3292617
- I. Cuiral-Zueco, G. López-Nicolás and H. Araujo, “Gripper positioning for object deformation tasks,” Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Robot. Autom. (ICRA), pp. 2403–2409, 2022. doi:10.1109/ICRA46639.2022.9812304
Interactive companion: A Tutorial on Shape Servoing of Deformable Objects