Clearing a Pile of Unknown Objects using Interactive Perception

We address the problem of clearing a pile of unknown objects using an autonomous interactive perception approach. Our robot hypothesizes the boundaries of objects in a pile of unknown objects (object segmentation) and verifies its hypotheses (object detection) using deliberate interactions. To guarantee the safety of the robot and the environment, we use compliant motion primitives for poking and grasping. Every verified segmentation hypothesis can be used to parameterize a compliant controller for manipulation or grasping. The robot alternates between poking actions to verify its segmentation and grasping actions to remove objects from the pile. We demonstrate our method with a robotic manipulator. We evaluate our approach with real-world experiments of clearing cluttered scenes composed of unknown objects.