Fast temporal projection using accurate physics-based geometric reasoning

Temporal projection is the computational problem of predicting what will happen when a robot executes its plan. Temporal projection for everyday manipulation tasks such as table setting and cleaning is a challenging task. Symbolic projection methods developed in Artificial Intelligence are too abstract to reason about how to place objects such that they do not hinder future actions. Simulation-based projection is fine-grained enough but computationally too expensive as it is not able to abstract away from the execution of uninteresting actions (such as navigation). In this paper we propose a novel temporal projection mechanism that combines the strengths of both approaches: it is able to abstract away from the execution of continuous but uninteresting actions and provides the realism and fine grainedness needed to reason about critical situations.