Model-Based Grasping of Unknown Objects from a Random Pile

Abstract

Grasping an unknown object in a pile is no easy task for a robot—it is often difficult to distinguish different objects; objects occlude one another; object proximity limits the number of feasible grasps available; and so forth. In this paper, we propose a simple approach to grasping unknown objects one by one from a random pile. The proposed method is divided into three main actions—over-segmentation of the images, a decision algorithm and ranking according to a grasp robustness index. Thus, the robot is able to distinguish the objects from the pile, choose the best candidate for grasping among these objects, and pick the most robust grasp for this candidate. With this approach, we can clear out a random pile of unknown objects, as shown in the experiments reported herein.