Robustness without Wrinkles: Parallel Simulation and Robust MPC for Certified Deformable Manipulation

CORD-SLS, a real-time control method for safe manipulation of deformable objects such as ropes and cloth, has been introduced. It utilizes a GPU-parallel differentiable simulator with contact smoothing for efficient gradient-based planning and incorporates a robust model predictive control (MPC) algorithm to handle model and sensing uncertainties. This method not only accelerates model-based reinforcement learning for training manipulation policies but also demonstrates significant improvements in safety, speed, and task success across various high-dimensional tasks, achieving planning speeds in the millisecond range.