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Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute

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Abstract

We investigate the problem of a robot searching for an object. This requires reasoning about both perception and manipulation: certain objects are moved because the target may be hidden behind them and others are moved because they block the manipulator's access to other objects. We contribute a formulation of the object search by manipulation problem using visibility and accessibility relations between objects. We also propose a greedy algorithm and show that it is optimal under certain conditions. We propose a second algorithm which is optimal under all conditions. This algorithm takes advantage of the structure of the visibility and accessibility relations between objects to quickly generate optimal plans. Finally, we demonstrate an implementation of both algorithms on a real robot using a real object detection system.

Keywords

Manipulation, Object Search, Clutter

Notes

Associated Center(s) / Consortia: Quality of Life Technology Center, National Robotics Engineering Center, and Center for the Foundations of Robotics

Associated Lab(s) / Group(s): Personal Robotics

Text Reference

Mehmet Dogar, Michael Koval, Abhijeet Tallavajhula, and Siddhartha Srinivasa, "Object Search by Manipulation," IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, May, 2013.

BibTeX Reference

@inproceedings{Dogar_2013_7399,
   author = "Mehmet Dogar and Michael Koval and Abhijeet Tallavajhula and Siddhartha Srinivasa",
   title = "Object Search by Manipulation",
   booktitle = "IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation",
   month = "May",
   year = "2013",
}

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