Object Recognition System using Deep Learning with Depth Images for Service Robots

Abstract

In an aging society with fewer children, service robots are expected to play an increasingly important role in people's lives. To realize a future with service robots, a generic object recognition system is necessary to recognize a wide variety of objects with a high degree of accuracy. Therefore, this study employs deep convolutional neural networks for the generic object recognition system. To improve the accuracy of object recognition, both RGB images and depth images can be used effectively. In this paper, we propose a new architecture “Dual Stream - VGG16 (DS-VGG16)” for a deep convolutional neural network to train both the RGB images and depth images, and we also present a new training method for the proposed architecture. The experimental results indicate that the proposed architecture and training method are effective. Finally, we develop an object recognition system based on the proposed method that has an interface of robot operating system for integrating the system into service robots.