Robotic Perception of Material

Abstract

In this paper, we develop a conceptual framework in which acts of manipulation are undertaken for the sake of perceiving material. Within this framework, we disambiguate different materials by actively contacting and probing them, and by sensing the resulting forces, displacements, and sounds. We report experimental results from four separate implementations of this framework using a variety of sensory modalities, including force, vision, and audition. For each implementation, we identify sensor-derived measures that are diagnostic of material properties, and use those measures to categorize objects by their material class. Based on the experimental results, we conclude that the issue of shape-invariance is of critical importance for future work. 1 Introduction Most past and present research in robotic perception concerns shape and position. Relatively little research addresses material properties, such as compliance and density. For robots to go beyond their current l...