Kinematic Multibody Model Generation of Deformable Linear Objects from Point Clouds

Control and localization of deformable linear objects (DLOs) require models to handle their deformation. This paper proposes an approach to automatically generate a model from available visual sensor information. Based on point cloud data obtained from a 3D stereo camera, the kinematics of a multibody model formulation are derived. The approach aims to balance the tradeoff between computational complexity and model accuracy. This is achieved with a geometric error criterion that reduces the introduced degrees of freedom (DOF) of the model to a necessary minimum, representing the continuous shape with as few bodies as possible. The approach is evaluated analytically and validated with an experimental scenario of DLO manipulation.