Collaborative Research: Visual Tactile Neural Fields for Active Digital Twin Generation

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Robots will perform better at everyday activities when they can quickly combine their sensory data into a model of their environment, just like how humans instinctively use all their senses and knowledge to accomplish daily tasks. Robots, however, must be programmed to create these models that humans do intuitively, effortlessly, and robustly. This robotics project explores a novel algorithmic approach that combines visual and tactile sensory data with a knowledge of physics and a capability to learn that makes robot planning and reasoning more effective, efficient, and adaptable. The project includes the development and testing of research prototypes, preparation of new curriculum, and outreach to high school students and teachers and to the general public.This project introduces a new data representation, called a Visual Tactile Neural Field (VTNF), that allows robots to combine data from visual and tactile sensors to create a unified model of an object. The VTNF is designed to be used in a closed-loop manner, where a robot may use data from its physical interactions with an object to create or improve a model and may use its current understanding of a model to inform how best to interact with a physical object. Towards this end, the investigators create the mathematical techniques, computational tools, and robot hardware necessary to generate a VTNF model. The investigators also develop techniques to quantify the uncertainty about an object and use this uncertainty to learn search policies that allow robots to generate accurate models as quickly as possible. The VTNF, which allows for the easy addition of new properties about an object, provides a flexible representational foundation for other researchers and practitioners to use to enable robots to learn faster by having a more detailed understanding of both the surrounding environment and their interactions with it.This project is supported by the cross-directorate Foundational Research program in Robotics and the National Robotics Initiative, jointly managed and funded by the Directorates for Engineering (ENG) and Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.