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arxiv: 2605.22021 · v1 · pith:HIK7XGGInew · submitted 2026-05-21 · 💻 cs.RO

Industrial Dual-Arm Box Handling via Online Inertial Estimation and Convex Wrench Optimization

Kenzhi Iskandar Wong , Lin Yang , Qian Ying Lee , Domenico Campolo This is my paper

Pith reviewed 2026-05-22 05:38 UTC · model grok-4.3

classification 💻 cs.RO
keywords dual-arm manipulationinertial estimationfriction optimizationconvex programmingrobotic handlingunknown object propertiescontact wrench
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0 comments X

The pith

A dual-arm robot can lift boxes of unknown mass and center of mass by estimating inertial properties from contact forces and optimizing friction-feasible wrenches in real time.

A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.

This paper develops a method for industrial dual-arm robots to handle boxes whose mass and center of mass are unknown beforehand. It estimates these properties in real time from the forces and torques measured at the robot's hands. Then it solves a convex optimization problem to find contact forces that stay within friction limits while minimizing the overall effort applied to the object. This approach ensures stable lifts without needing to separately tune parameters for avoiding slips or preventing too much squeezing. The result is a practical system that works on real robots even when the object's balance point is off-center.

Core claim

The central discovery is that by treating friction feasibility as a hard constraint in a second-order cone program and minimizing contact effort inside that feasible set, combined with online estimation of mass and center of mass from end-effector wrenches, the robot can achieve stable object lifting and orientation maintenance without slip or drop for objects with unknown inertial parameters.

What carries the argument

Online inertial estimation from measured contact wrenches combined with a second-order cone program enforcing ellipsoidal friction-limit-surface constraints.

Load-bearing premise

The contact wrenches measured at the end-effectors are accurate and informative enough to estimate the object's mass and center of mass reliably for the optimization to succeed under actual friction conditions.

What would settle it

Observing the object slip or drop during lifting experiments on surfaces with known friction coefficients when using the estimated inertial parameters and optimized wrenches would falsify the claim.

Figures

Figures reproduced from arXiv: 2605.22021 by Domenico Campolo, Kenzhi Iskandar Wong, Lin Yang, Qian Ying Lee.

Figure 1
Figure 1. Figure 1: Dual-arm box handling whose mass and center of mass are unknown [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p001_1.png] view at source ↗
Figure 2
Figure 2. Figure 2: Dual-arm lifting under different known CoM configurations. (a) Cen￾tered CoM: force equilibrium and friction constraints are sufficient. (b) Planar off-center CoM: the gravitational moment is balanced by redistributing contact forces. (c) 3D off-center CoM: contact torques are required when gravity does not intersect the contact line. ject CoM is known. When the CoM coincides with the geo￾metric center and… view at source ↗
Figure 3
Figure 3. Figure 3: Overview of the proposed framework. An o [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p003_3.png] view at source ↗
Figure 4
Figure 4. Figure 4: Phase I trajectory refinement via black-box optimization. The ob [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p003_4.png] view at source ↗
Figure 5
Figure 5. Figure 5: Phase II overview. (a) Impedance-based interaction model dur [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p004_5.png] view at source ↗
Figure 6
Figure 6. Figure 6: Object, left handle, and right handle coordinate frames. The box [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p004_6.png] view at source ↗
Figure 7
Figure 7. Figure 7: Experimental setup for dual-arm box manipulation. (a) Dual-arm [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p007_7.png] view at source ↗
Figure 9
Figure 9. Figure 9: Environment contact wrench before and after Phase I refinement. [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p007_9.png] view at source ↗
Figure 8
Figure 8. Figure 8: Object motion before (top) and after (bottom) Phase I trajectory re [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p007_8.png] view at source ↗
Figure 10
Figure 10. Figure 10: Phase II CoM estimation results visualized as the inferred [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p008_10.png] view at source ↗
Figure 11
Figure 11. Figure 11: Phase III friction feasibility results for Configuration 1 and 2 (both Run 1). (a) Coulomb friction cone defined by (42) and incorporated in the friction [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p009_11.png] view at source ↗
Figure 12
Figure 12. Figure 12: Execution results for the full pipeline. (a) Representative image se [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p010_12.png] view at source ↗
Figure 8
Figure 8. Figure 8 [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p010_8.png] view at source ↗
read the original abstract

Industrial robotic object handling often involves boxes and packages whose mass and center of mass are not known in advance. These uncertainties affect the force--moment balance required for stable lifting, and improper regulation of contact wrenches can lead to slip, object drop, orientation deviation, or excessive squeezing. This paper presents a friction-aware dual-arm box-handling framework for objects with unknown inertial properties. The proposed approach estimates the object mass and center of mass online from measured contact wrenches, and computes friction-feasible contact forces and torsional moments through a second-order cone program (SOCP) under ellipsoidal friction-limit-surface constraints. An offline trajectory refinement stage is also included to reduce undesired object--environment contact when geometric constraints are present. By enforcing friction feasibility as a hard constraint and minimizing contact effort within the feasible region, the framework achieves stable lifting without treating slip avoidance and excessive squeezing as separately tuned objectives. Experiments on a real dual-arm robotic system under different center-of-mass configurations demonstrate that the method lifts objects with unknown inertial properties while maintaining stable frictional contact.

Editorial analysis

A structured set of objections, weighed in public.

Desk editor's note, referee report, simulated authors' rebuttal, and a circularity audit. Tearing a paper down is the easy half of reading it; the pith above is the substance, this is the friction.

Referee Report

3 major / 2 minor

Summary. The manuscript presents a friction-aware dual-arm box-handling framework for objects with unknown inertial properties. It estimates object mass and center of mass online from measured contact wrenches at the end-effectors, then computes friction-feasible contact forces and torsional moments via a second-order cone program (SOCP) that enforces ellipsoidal friction-limit-surface constraints as hard feasibility conditions while minimizing total contact effort. An offline trajectory refinement stage reduces undesired object-environment contact under geometric constraints. Real-robot experiments on a dual-arm system under varied center-of-mass configurations demonstrate stable lifting while maintaining frictional contact.

Significance. If the claims hold, the work offers a principled integration of online inertial estimation with convex wrench optimization for stable dual-arm manipulation of uncertain objects. Enforcing friction feasibility as a hard constraint in the SOCP, rather than as a separately tuned objective, is a clear methodological strength, as is the real-world experimental validation across CoM configurations. This could reduce reliance on manual force tuning in industrial settings.

major comments (3)
  1. [§3] §3 (Online Inertial Estimation): The linear mapping from measured end-effector wrenches to mass and CoM estimates is presented without a quantitative error propagation analysis. Given sensor noise, contact-point uncertainty, and possible gripper compliance, it is unclear whether the recovered parameters are accurate enough for the subsequent SOCP to remain inside the true (unknown) friction cones; this directly affects the central claim of guaranteed stable, non-slipping lifts.
  2. [§4] §4 (SOCP Wrench Optimization): While the ellipsoidal friction-limit-surface constraints are enforced as hard feasibility conditions, the manuscript does not report sensitivity of the SOCP solution to bounded perturbations in the estimated mass/CoM. A concrete test (e.g., Monte-Carlo sampling of estimation errors drawn from experimental residuals) would be needed to confirm that the optimized wrenches remain feasible under realistic conditions.
  3. [§5] §5 (Experiments): The reported demonstrations of stable lifting are qualitative; quantitative metrics such as estimated vs. ground-truth inertial parameters, measured slip margins, or force/torque residuals relative to the friction limit surface are not provided. Without these, it is difficult to assess whether the framework truly operates inside real friction limits despite estimation inaccuracies.
minor comments (2)
  1. [§4] The notation for the ellipsoidal friction limit surface (semi-axes and orientation) should be defined explicitly with equations rather than referenced only in text.
  2. [§5] Figure captions for the experimental setup and wrench plots could include more detail on the specific CoM offsets tested and the observed contact force magnitudes.

Simulated Author's Rebuttal

3 responses · 0 unresolved

We thank the referee for the positive assessment and constructive major comments. We address each point below and will incorporate revisions to strengthen the manuscript.

read point-by-point responses

  1. Referee: [§3] §3 (Online Inertial Estimation): The linear mapping from measured end-effector wrenches to mass and CoM estimates is presented without a quantitative error propagation analysis. Given sensor noise, contact-point uncertainty, and possible gripper compliance, it is unclear whether the recovered parameters are accurate enough for the subsequent SOCP to remain inside the true (unknown) friction cones; this directly affects the central claim of guaranteed stable, non-slipping lifts.

    Authors: We agree that including a quantitative error propagation analysis would better support the robustness of the inertial estimation for the SOCP feasibility. In the revised manuscript, we will add an analysis in §3 or an appendix detailing the propagation of measurement uncertainties (sensor noise, contact point variations, and gripper compliance) to the mass and CoM estimates. We will derive bounds or use covariance propagation to show that the estimation errors are sufficiently small to keep the SOCP solutions within the true friction cones under the experimental conditions. revision: yes

  2. Referee: [§4] §4 (SOCP Wrench Optimization): While the ellipsoidal friction-limit-surface constraints are enforced as hard feasibility conditions, the manuscript does not report sensitivity of the SOCP solution to bounded perturbations in the estimated mass/CoM. A concrete test (e.g., Monte-Carlo sampling of estimation errors drawn from experimental residuals) would be needed to confirm that the optimized wrenches remain feasible under realistic conditions.

    Authors: We acknowledge the value of a sensitivity analysis for the SOCP. We will include in the revised manuscript a Monte-Carlo study where we sample perturbations in the estimated mass and CoM from the residuals observed in our experiments. This will demonstrate that the optimized contact wrenches remain feasible with respect to the friction constraints even under these perturbations, thereby reinforcing the central claim. revision: yes

  3. Referee: [§5] §5 (Experiments): The reported demonstrations of stable lifting are qualitative; quantitative metrics such as estimated vs. ground-truth inertial parameters, measured slip margins, or force/torque residuals relative to the friction limit surface are not provided. Without these, it is difficult to assess whether the framework truly operates inside real friction limits despite estimation inaccuracies.

    Authors: We agree that quantitative metrics would enhance the experimental validation. In the revision, we will augment §5 with quantitative results, including comparisons of estimated inertial parameters against ground-truth values obtained from independent measurements for the tested configurations, as well as metrics for slip margins and the distance of the applied wrenches to the friction limit surface. These will be derived from the logged data of the real-robot experiments. revision: yes

Circularity Check

0 steps flagged

No significant circularity in derivation chain

full rationale

The paper presents a sequential pipeline: inertial parameters (mass and CoM) are estimated online from measured end-effector wrenches via a linear system, after which the estimates are inserted as fixed inputs into an SOCP that minimizes total contact effort subject to ellipsoidal friction-limit-surface constraints treated as hard feasibility conditions. These two stages do not reduce to each other by construction; the SOCP does not redefine or refit the inertial parameters, and the estimation step does not presuppose the friction-feasible wrench distribution that the optimizer later produces. No self-citations, uniqueness theorems, or ansatzes from prior author work are invoked as load-bearing justifications in the abstract or described method. The framework therefore remains self-contained against external benchmarks of wrench measurement and convex optimization, yielding a normal non-circular finding.

Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger

0 free parameters · 2 axioms · 0 invented entities

The framework rests on standard rigid-body contact mechanics and friction modeling assumptions common to robotics; no new entities are introduced and no free parameters are explicitly fitted in the provided abstract.

axioms (2)
  • domain assumption Object is rigid and contact wrenches can be measured accurately at the end-effectors.
    Required for the online inertial estimation step described in the abstract.
  • domain assumption Ellipsoidal friction-limit surfaces provide a sufficiently accurate model of contact friction for the SOCP.
    Used to formulate the hard feasibility constraints in the wrench optimization.

pith-pipeline@v0.9.0 · 5718 in / 1426 out tokens · 39416 ms · 2026-05-22T05:38:33.746968+00:00 · methodology

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Reference graph

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