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

该基础设施提案，获得两个Kinova JACO研究臂来升级老化的移动机械手，将实现与非刚性物体的交互感知的基础研究。传统上，机器人技术主要研究刚性物体。PI团队建议研究如何筛选杂乱的非刚性物体（其中许多物体相互遮挡），并对每个物体进行适当的分类和操作。所提出的工作不仅涉及计算刚性物体的抓取点，并且可以为离线学习提供训练样例；相反，重点是分割、抓取和与非刚性对象的交互，这些对象的模型很难构建。其目的是将交互式感知的想法与纺织品操作的想法结合起来，随着时间的推移学习物体属性，并与非结构化环境中的物体进行交互。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无数的。此外，自动折叠衣服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，研究结果将纳入现有课程，供本科生和研究生学习。外展计划包括向附近的学校介绍弱势和代表性不足的高中学生从事STEM职业。

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.