Welcome to ManipulationNet

For more details about ManipulationNet, please visit manipulation-net.org. For any questions, please contact support@manipulation-net.org.

Overview

ManipulationNet delivers standardized task setups: Each task setup is defined by a physical object set and a task protocol that governs its use. ManipulationNet designs, fabricates, and distributes task setups to registered teams worldwide. Available tasks are listed here.

ManipulationNet evaluates authentic task performance: ManipulationNet decouples performance collection from result verification. Manipulation performance is collected decentrally via the mnet-client with time and location flexibility, while final verification occurs centrally by the organizing committee for comparable results.

This document introduces how to properly use the mnet-client to participate in each hosted benchmark task under ManipulationNet.

What is mnet-client?

The mnet-client is a middle layer between the robotic system and the mnet-server to support distributed manipulation benchmarking on standardized task setups. The robotic system communicates with the mnet-client through ROS services and topics. In general, the mnet-client is responsible for:

  1. collect authentic manipulation performance on standardized task setups and upload it to the server for comparable research;

  2. deliver task instructions from the server to the robotic system in real-time. This could involve language/visual prompts, task-specific instructions, and more;

  3. report task execution and human intervention logs from the robotic system to the server in real-time to better describe the manipulation performance.

This document introduces the ROS 2 version of mnet-client; for the ROS 1 version, please refer to here.

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