Simplify the robot programming through an action-and-skill manipulation framework

The paper introduces a robotic manipulation framework suitable for the execution of manipulation tasks. Based on the ROS platform, the framework provides advanced motion planning and control functionalities for robotic systems to guarantee a high level of autonomy during the execution of an action. The integrated motion planning module can handle multiple motion planners to generate collision-free trajectories for a given planning scene that can be dynamically uploaded. In the same way, the robot controllers can be changed online on the base of the robot behavior required by the action under execution. The motion control of the robotic system is fully demanded to the manipulation framework relieving the upper control layers from the management of low-level functionalities and the task geometrical information. The framework can be used downstream to a task planner or as a standalone library to simplify the robot programming in complex manipulation tasks.