This paper presents a robotic pick-and-place system that is capable of grasping and recognizing both known and novel objects in cluttered environments. The key new feature of the system is that it handles a wide range of object categories without needing any task-specific training data for novel objects. To achieve this, it first uses a categoryagnostic affordance prediction algorithm to select among four different grasping primitive behaviors. It then recognizes picked objects with a cross-domain image classification framework that matches observed images to product images. Since product images are readily available for a wide range of objects (e.g., from the web), the system works out-of-the-box for novel objects without requiring any additional training data. Exhaustive experimental results demonstrate that our multi-affordance grasping achieves high success rates for a wide variety of objects in clutter, and our recognition algorithm achieves high accuracy for both known and novel grasped objects. The approach was part of the MIT-Princeton Team system that took 1st place in the stowing task at the 2017 Amazon Robotics Challenge. All code, datasets, and pre-trained models are available online at http://arc.cs.princeton.edu

This work describes the development of a highresolution tactile-sensing finger for robot grasping. This finger, inspired by previous GelSight sensing techniques, features an integration that is slimmer, more robust, and with more homogeneous output than previous vision-based tactile sensors.To achieve a compact integration, we redesign the optical path from illumination source to camera by combining light guides and an arrangement of mirror reflections. We parameterize the optical path with geometric design variables and describe the tradeoffs between the finger thickness, the depth of field of the camera, and the size of the tactile sensing area.The sensor sustains the wear from continuous use -and abuse -in grasping tasks by combining tougher materials for the compliant soft gel, a textured fabric skin, a structurally rigid body, and a calibration process that maintains homogeneous illumination and contrast of the tactile images during use. Finally, we evaluate the sensor's durability along four metrics that track the signal quality during more than 3000 grasping experiments.

This paper presents a robotic pick-and-place system that is capable of grasping and recognizing both known and novel objects in cluttered environments. The key new feature of the system is that it handles a wide range of object categories without needing any task-specific training data for novel objects. To achieve this, it first uses an object-agnostic grasping framework to map from visual observations to actions: inferring dense pixel-wise probability maps of the affordances for four different grasping primitive actions. It then executes the action with the highest affordance and recognizes picked objects with a cross-domain image classification framework that matches observed images to product images. Since product images are readily available for a wide range of objects (e.g., from the web), the system works out-of-the-box for novel objects without requiring any additional data collection or re-training. Exhaustive experimental results demonstrate that our multiaffordance grasping achieves high success rates for a wide variety of objects in clutter, and our recognition algorithm achieves high accuracy for both known and novel grasped objects. The approach was part of the MIT-Princeton Team system that took 1st place in the stowing task at the 2017 Amazon Robotics Challenge. All code, datasets, and pre-trained models are available online at

A sequence of Kendama manipulations with corresponding displacement field (yellow) and force field (red). Video can be found on Youtube: https://youtu.be/hWw9A0ZBZuUAbstract-In this paper, we present a new version of tactile sensor GelSlim 2.0 with the capability to estimate the contact force distribution in real time. The sensor is vision-based and uses an array of markers to track deformations on a gel pad due to contact. A new hardware design makes the sensor more rugged, parametrically adjustable and improves illumination. Leveraging the sensor's increased functionality, we propose to use inverse Finite Element Method (iFEM), a numerical method to reconstruct the contact force distribution based on marker displacements. The sensor is able to provide force distribution of contact with high spatial density. Experiments and comparison with ground truth show that the reconstructed force distribution is physically reasonable with good accuracy.

This paper presents a novel regrasp control policy that makes use of tactile sensing to plan local grasp adjustments. Our approach determines regrasp actions by virtually searching for local transformations of tactile measurements that improve the quality of the grasp.First, we construct a tactile-based grasp quality metric using a deep convolutional neural network trained on over 2800 grasps. The quality of each grasp, a continuous value between 0 and 1, is determined experimentally by measuring its resistance to external perturbations. Second, we simulate the tactile imprints associated with robot motions relative to the initial grasp by performing rigid-body transformations of the given tactile measurements. The newly generated tactile imprints are evaluated with the learned grasp quality network and the regrasp action is chosen to maximize the grasp quality.Results show that the grasp quality network can predict the outcome of grasps with an average accuracy of 85% on known objects and 75% on novel objects. The regrasp control policy improves the success rate of grasp actions by an average relative increase of 70% on a test set of 8 objects. We provide a video summarizing our approach at https://youtu.be/gjn7DmfpwDk.