Overview

Honours thesis investigating bimanual (dual-arm) robot manipulation. The work focuses on coordination strategies, control approaches, and practical methods for achieving reliable two-handed tasks.

Background

Many real-world manipulation tasks benefit from or require two arms working together. Coordinating two manipulators introduces challenges in planning, synchronisation, force interaction, and robustness that single-arm systems do not face to the same degree.

Objectives

  • Explore practical approaches to dual-arm coordination
  • Implement and evaluate selected strategies on available hardware / simulation
  • Document design decisions, limitations, and results clearly

Approach

The project is treated as a living engineering diary. Progress, experiments, and reflections are recorded over time (see the Blog section for week-by-week notes).

Key themes:

  • Motion and task planning for two arms
  • Synchronisation and shared control
  • Sensing and feedback for contact-rich tasks
  • Practical software architecture (likely ROS 2 based)

Technologies

  • ROS 2
  • Python / C++
  • Simulation and/or physical dual-arm platform
  • Standard robotics tooling (MoveIt, etc. as applicable)

Status

Work is ongoing. This page will be updated as results and documentation mature.

Thesis progress notes appear in the Blog.