II-NEW: Robot Arms for Interactive Perception of Highly Non-Rigid Objects

这项基础设施提案，收购两个Kinova雅科研究手臂，以升级老化的移动的机械手，将使基础研究的互动感知与非刚性物体。传统上，机器人技术一直专注于刚性物体。PI团队建议研究如何筛选一堆杂乱的非刚性对象，其中许多对象相互遮挡，并正确分类和操纵每个对象。所提出的工作不仅涉及计算刚性对象的训练示例可用于离线学习的把握点;相反，重点是分割，把握，并与非刚性对象的模型难以构建的互动。其目的是将交互感知的思想与纺织品操作的思想相结合，以随着时间的推移学习物体的属性，并与非结构化的物体进行交互。非刚性物体在许多高度可见的行业中很重要，例如纺织品和汽车制造业，因此更广泛的影响是众多的。此外，自动洗衣折叠将对服务机器人产生重大影响，其中真空清洁机器人和草坪修剪机器人等产品已经进入商业领域。研究结果将通过会议记录和期刊出版物提供给研究界，研究将被纳入现有课程，以达到本科生和研究生。向附近的学校介绍弱势和代表性不足的高中生从事STEM职业的演讲也包括在推广计划中。

This infrastructure proposal, acquiring two Kinova JACO Research arms to upgrade aging mobile manipulators, will enable fundamental research in interactive perception with non-rigid objects. Traditionally, robotics has focused upon rigid objects. The PI team proposes to enable study of the problem of sifting through a cluttered pile of non-rigid objects, many of which are occluding one another, and properly classifying and manipulating each object. The proposed work is not merely concerned with computing grasp points of rigid objects for which training examples are available for off-line learning; rather the focus is upon segmenting, grasping, and interacting with non-rigid objects for which models are difficult to construct. The aim is to merge ideas from interactive perception with those of the textile manipulationn to learn object properties over time and interact with objects in unstructuredenvironments.Non-rigid objects are important in a number of highly-visible industries, such as textiles and automotive manufacturing, so broader impacts are numerous. Moreover, automated laundry folding will have a significant impact on service robots, where products such as vacuum cleaning robots and lawn mowing robots have already reached the commercial sector. The findings of the research will be made available to the research community via conference proceedings and journal publications, and the research will be integrated into existing courses to reach undergraduate and graduate students. Presentations to nearby schools to introduce disadvantaged and underrepresented high school students to STEM careers is included in the outreach plan.