An in-finger sliding skill for cable routing and manipulation

Higher wages and increased product variation in the production of electric commodities and machines have lead to an increased automation in manufacturing plants and therefore also an increased number of tasks that involve cable automation. However, cable manipulation is still a challenging task for robotic automation. The complexity arises because cables have infinite degrees of freedom by nature, they can deform in unexpected ways and their kinematics are hard to model. One possible way to deal with the complexity of manipulating cables is to keep the cable in tension during the task. This because while in tension, the cable behaves as a rigid object in the direction stretching. Enabling robots to slide through cables while mantaining the tension is then an interesting topic.