Precise perception of contact interactions is essential for the fine-grained
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. 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 upon the release of
the grasp. The proposed method is demonstrated on various pairs of objects that
are used in a very popular board game.Comment: Under submissio