TR2024-018

Estimation of Extrinsic Contact Patch for Stable Placement

    •  Ota, K., Jha, D.K., Jatavallabhula, K., Kanezaki, A., Tenenbaum, J.B., "Estimation of Extrinsic Contact Patch for Stable Placement", IEEE IROS 2023 Workshop on Visuo-Tactile Perception, Learning, Control for Manipulation and HRI, September 2023.
      BibTeX TR2024-018 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Ota2023sep2,
      • author = {Ota, Kei and Jha, Devesh K. and Jatavallabhula, Krishna and Kanezaki, Asako and Tenenbaum, Joshua B.},
      • title = {Estimation of Extrinsic Contact Patch for Stable Placement},
      • booktitle = {IEEE IROS 2023 Workshop on Visuo-Tactile Perception, Learning, Control for Manipulation and HRI},
      • year = 2023,
      • month = sep,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2024-018}
      • }
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  • Research Area:

    Robotics

Abstract:

Precise perception of contact interactions is essential for the design of very precise and fine manipulation skills for robots. In this paper, we present the design of feedback skills for robots that must learn to stack complex-shaped objects on top of each other (see Fig. 1). To design such a system, a robot should be able to reason about the stability of placement from very gentle contact interactions. Our results demonstrate that it is possible to infer the stability of object placement based on tactile readings during contact formation between the object and its environment. In particular, we estimate the contact patch between a grasped object and its environment using force and tactile observations to estimate the stability of the object during a contact formation. The contact patch could be used to estimate the stability of the object up on release of grasp. The proposed method is demonstrated on various pairs of objects that are used in a very popular board game.