Towards Tasking Humanoids For Lift-And-Carry Non-Rigid Material

The lift-and-carry of non-rigid objects is challenging for both people and bipedal robots. Examples include lifting and carrying jugs, ferry cans or bags that are respectively filled with water, gasoline or sand. Carrying such objects often makes it difficult to walk due to the shifting center-of-mass. As such, tripping and falling are risks. Such lift-and-carry is a common material handling task. For bipedal robots to be deployed in unstructured or cluttered environments like factory floors, agricultural fields or disaster sites, robust methods for lift-and carry are needed. This paper motivates, highlights, and provides experimental results to underscore the value and challenges of the bipedal lift-and-carry of non-rigid objects.