Learning the tactile signatures of prototypical object parts for robust part-based grasping of novel objects

Abstract

We present a robotic agent that learns to derive object grasp stability from touch. The main contribution of our work is the use of a characterization of the shape of the part of the object that is enclosed by the gripper to condition the tactile-based stability model. As a result, the agent is able to express that a specific tactile signature may for instance indicate stability when grasping a cylinder, while cuing instability when grasping a box. We proceed by (1) discretizing the space of graspable object parts into a small set of prototypical shapes, via a data-driven clustering process, and (2) learning a touch-based stability classifier for each prototype. Classification is conducted through kernel logistic regression, applied to a low-dimensional approximation of the tactile data read from the robot's hand. We present an experiment that demonstrates the applicability of the method, yielding a success rate of 89%. Our experiment also shows that the distribution of tactile data differs substantially between grasps collected with different prototypes, supporting the use of shape cues in touch-based stability estimators.