Project ActReMa

Active Recognition and Manipulation of Simple Parts Exploiting 3D Information

This project is funded by the European Clearing House for Open Robotics Development (ECHORD, FP7 ICT-2007.2.2, GA 231143).

Partners

• Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
• Autonomous Intelligent Systems Group (Coordinator)
• Computer Graphics Group
• Metronom Automation GmbH

Summary

This experiment investigates a hyper-flexible cells scenario. In particular, we consider the following setting: A robot delivers parts to a process station. The parts are made available to the workspace of the robot in transport boxes that are not required to be packed in a systematic way. With its onboard 3D laser scanning sensor, the robot recognizes and identifies the topmost objects in the boxes. It grasps the parts out of the box and moves them to the station for further processing. The parts can be shaped nearly arbitrarily. We only assume that parts can be approximated by geometric shape primitives like e.g. cylinders or spheres. A new part type can be learned in a matter of minutes simply by presenting an exemplar to the robot. 

The major challenges arising in this setting which will be addressed in the experiment are: 

1. Robust and efficient recognition of the composition of objects from measurements of a 3D laser scanning device. 
2. Efficient exploration of the part arrangement in the transport boxes to handle occlusions. 
3. Flexible grasp and motion planning for a robot under real-time constraints in a semi-structured environment, i.e. when the arrangement of parts and transport boxes is variable. 

Publications:

Dirk Holz, Matthias Nieuwenhuisen, David Droeschel, Jörg Stückler, Sven Behnke, Alexander Berner, and Reinhard Klein:
Active Recognition and Manipulation of Objects Based on Shape Primitives
Poster at 5th International Conference on Cognitive Systems (CogSys) Vienna, February 2012.

Matthias Nieuwenhuisen, Jörg Stückler, and Sven Behnke, Alexander Berner, and Reinhard Klein:
Shape-Primitive Based Object Recognition and Grasping
Accepted for 7th German Conference on Robotics (ROBOTIK), Munich, to appear May 2012.