Wei, Minglun, Yang, Xintong  ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7612-614X, Lai, Yu-Kun ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2094-5680, Amir Tafrishi, Seyed and Ji, Ze ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8968-9902
2025.
A physics-informed demonstration-guided learning framework for granular material manipulation.
IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems
10.1109/tnnls.2025.3622482
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Abstract
Due to the complex physical properties of granular materials, research on robot learning for manipulating such materials predominantly either disregards the consideration of their physical characteristics or uses surrogate models to approximate their physical properties. Learning to manipulate granular materials based on physical information obtained through precise modeling remains an unsolved problem. In this article, we propose to address this challenge by constructing a differentiable physics-based simulator for granular materials using the Taichi programming language and developing a learning framework accelerated by demonstrations generated through gradient-based optimization on nongranular materials within our simulator, eliminating the costly data collection and model training of prior methods. Experimental results show that our method, with its flexible design, trains robust policies that are capable of executing the task of transporting granular materials in both simulated and real-world environments, beyond the capabilities of standard reinforcement learning (RL), imitation learning (IL), and prior task-specific granular manipulation methods.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Date Type: | Published Online |
| Status: | In Press |
| Schools: | Schools > Engineering Schools > Computer Science & Informatics |
| Publisher: | Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers |
| ISSN: | 2162-237X |
| Date of Acceptance: | 12 October 2025 |
| Last Modified: | 04 Nov 2025 16:34 |
| URI: | https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/182077 |
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