14,255 research outputs found
Tracking objects with point clouds from vision and touch
We present an object-tracking framework that fuses point cloud information from an RGB-D camera with tactile information from a GelSight contact sensor. GelSight can be treated as a source of dense local geometric information, which we incorporate directly into a conventional point-cloud-based articulated object tracker based on signed-distance functions. Our implementation runs at 12 Hz using an online depth reconstruction algorithm for GelSight and a modified second-order update for the tracking algorithm. We present data from hardware experiments demonstrating that the addition of contact-based geometric information significantly improves the pose accuracy during contact, and provides robustness to occlusions of small objects by the robot's end effector
Tactile Mapping and Localization from High-Resolution Tactile Imprints
This work studies the problem of shape reconstruction and object localization
using a vision-based tactile sensor, GelSlim. The main contributions are the
recovery of local shapes from contact, an approach to reconstruct the tactile
shape of objects from tactile imprints, and an accurate method for object
localization of previously reconstructed objects. The algorithms can be applied
to a large variety of 3D objects and provide accurate tactile feedback for
in-hand manipulation. Results show that by exploiting the dense tactile
information we can reconstruct the shape of objects with high accuracy and do
on-line object identification and localization, opening the door to reactive
manipulation guided by tactile sensing. We provide videos and supplemental
information in the project's website
http://web.mit.edu/mcube/research/tactile_localization.html.Comment: ICRA 2019, 7 pages, 7 figures. Website:
http://web.mit.edu/mcube/research/tactile_localization.html Video:
https://youtu.be/uMkspjmDbq
MetaSpace II: Object and full-body tracking for interaction and navigation in social VR
MetaSpace II (MS2) is a social Virtual Reality (VR) system where multiple
users can not only see and hear but also interact with each other, grasp and
manipulate objects, walk around in space, and get tactile feedback. MS2 allows
walking in physical space by tracking each user's skeleton in real-time and
allows users to feel by employing passive haptics i.e., when users touch or
manipulate an object in the virtual world, they simultaneously also touch or
manipulate a corresponding object in the physical world. To enable these
elements in VR, MS2 creates a correspondence in spatial layout and object
placement by building the virtual world on top of a 3D scan of the real world.
Through the association between the real and virtual world, users are able to
walk freely while wearing a head-mounted device, avoid obstacles like walls and
furniture, and interact with people and objects. Most current virtual reality
(VR) environments are designed for a single user experience where interactions
with virtual objects are mediated by hand-held input devices or hand gestures.
Additionally, users are only shown a representation of their hands in VR
floating in front of the camera as seen from a first person perspective. We
believe, representing each user as a full-body avatar that is controlled by
natural movements of the person in the real world (see Figure 1d), can greatly
enhance believability and a user's sense immersion in VR.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures. Video:
http://living.media.mit.edu/projects/metaspace-ii
Realtime State Estimation with Tactile and Visual sensing. Application to Planar Manipulation
Accurate and robust object state estimation enables successful object
manipulation. Visual sensing is widely used to estimate object poses. However,
in a cluttered scene or in a tight workspace, the robot's end-effector often
occludes the object from the visual sensor. The robot then loses visual
feedback and must fall back on open-loop execution.
In this paper, we integrate both tactile and visual input using a framework
for solving the SLAM problem, incremental smoothing and mapping (iSAM), to
provide a fast and flexible solution. Visual sensing provides global pose
information but is noisy in general, whereas contact sensing is local, but its
measurements are more accurate relative to the end-effector. By combining them,
we aim to exploit their advantages and overcome their limitations. We explore
the technique in the context of a pusher-slider system. We adapt iSAM's
measurement cost and motion cost to the pushing scenario, and use an
instrumented setup to evaluate the estimation quality with different object
shapes, on different surface materials, and under different contact modes
- …