Transparent, Reflective Objects Now Within Grasp of Robots

Carnegie Mellon researchers teach robots to infer shapes from color images. Kitchen robots are a popular vision of the future, but if a robot of today tries to grasp a kitchen staple such as a clear measuring cup or a shiny knife, it likely won't be able to. Transparent and reflective objects are the things of robot nightmares. Roboticists at Carnegie Mellon University, however, report success with a new technique they've developed for teaching robots to pick up these troublesome objects. The technique doesn't require fancy sensors, exhaustive training or human guidance, but relies primarily on a color camera. The researchers will present this new system during this summer's International Conference on Robotics and Automation virtual conference. David Held , an assistant professor in CMU's Robotics Institute , said depth cameras, which shine infrared light on an object to determine its shape, work well for identifying opaque objects.