Object Shape Exploration

Codes for our paper Online active and dynamic object shape exploration with a multi-fingered robotic hand

Installation

Go to the package folder inhand_exploration and run the script environment_configuration.m to configure the path.

Quick Start

To perform an analysis of the Allegro hand model

Go to the folder hand_sampling;
Run script main.m to analyze and visualize the intersection region between hand's reachability space and the target object's surface in Cartesian space. This intersection region could be used to plan the next exploration position of the finger tip.

Data format

Object models are saved as point cloud data under database. For csv file, the point cloud is an (N,6) matrix. N is the number of data samples; columns save the [x,y,z,u,v,w] coordinates data. [x,y,z] are coordinates, and [u,v,w] represent the surface normals.

Third-party packages

SynGrasp2.3 package is used in MATLAB to create the hand model. It has been replaced by customized package mySynGrasp in the current version.

Signal estimation strategy

The key challenge is to estimate the rotation angle of the explored object. Currently, the estimation considers three inputs:

rotation command sent to robot;
similarity between sampled data in this trial and the entire collected dataset;
estimation based on sensor signal (surface norm etc);

The robot cmd is used as the main information source. The other two inputs are used as correction terms.