Autonomous Manipulation in Clutter
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Autonomous manipulation of unknown objects in a pile is
a prerequisite for a large variety of robotic applications
ranging from household robotics to flexible manufacturing
and from space exploration to search and rescue missions.
We focus on identifying and removing unknown objects from a pile, an important capability, enabling more advanced behaviors such as object counting, arranging, and sorting. |
We propose an interactive perception approach in which the robot actively verifies its understanding of the pile. Our system is fully autonomous: the robot hypothesizes objects in the scene, verifies its hypotheses with deliberate interactions, and remove detected objects from the pile and into a target location. We rely on compliant motion primitives to guarantee the safety of the robot and the environment.
- The robot's perceptual capabilities include:
- A novel scene segmentation algorithm based on 3D data
- A novel object detection algorithm to verify segmentation hypotheses
- Autonomous action selection based on the verified segmentation
- The robot's manipulation and grasping capabilities are based on a library of compliant controllers
- Our system successfully integrates perception, manipulation, grasping, and motion planning