Visual and Tactile Fusion for Estimating the Pose of a Grasped Object

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Robot 2019: Fourth Iberian Robotics Conference (ROBOT 2019)

Abstract

This paper considers the problem of fusing vision and touch senses together to estimate the 6D pose of an object while it is grasped. Assuming that a textured 3D model of the object is available, first, Scale-Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) keypoints of the object are extracted, and a Random sample consensus (RANSAC) method is used to match these features with the textured model. Then, optical flow is used to visually track the object while a grasp is performed. After the hand contacts the object, a tactile-based pose estimation is performed using a Particle Filter. During grasp stabilization and hand movement, the pose of the object is continuously tracked by fusing the visual and tactile estimations with an extended Kalman filter. The main contribution of this work is the continuous use of both sensing modalities to reduce the uncertainty of tactile sensing in those degrees of freedom in which there is no information available, as presented through the experimental validation.

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Acknowledgments

The authors want to thank Naiara Escudero for her assistance on the implementation of the Extended Kalman Filter, and Karl Pauwels for insights given on the use of Simtrack.

The research leading to these results has received funding from RoboCity2030-DIH-CM, Madrid Robotics Digital Innovation Hub, S2018/NMT-4331, funded by “Programas de Actividades I + D en la Comunidad de Madrid” and co-funded by Structural Funds of the EU. This work has also received funding from the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness under the project DPI2016-80077-R.

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Correspondence to David Álvarez .

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Álvarez, D., Roa, M.A., Moreno, L. (2020). Visual and Tactile Fusion for Estimating the Pose of a Grasped Object. In: Silva, M., Luís Lima, J., Reis, L., Sanfeliu, A., Tardioli, D. (eds) Robot 2019: Fourth Iberian Robotics Conference. ROBOT 2019. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 1093. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36150-1_16

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