In-Hand Object Rotation via Rapid Motor Adaptation

Abstract

Generalized in-hand manipulation has long been an unsolved challenge of robotics. As a small step towards this grand goal, we demonstrate how to design and learn a simple adaptive controller to achieve in-hand object rotation using only fingertips. The controller is trained entirely in simulation on only cylindrical objects, which then – without any fine-tuning – can be directly deployed to a real robot hand to rotate dozens of objects with diverse sizes, shapes, and weights over the z-axis. This is achieved via rapid online adaptation of the robot’s controller to the object properties using only proprioception history. Furthermore, natural and stable finger gaits automatically emerge from training the control policy via reinforcement learning. Code and more videos are available at our Website.