Tactile Recognition by Probing: Identifying a Polygon on a Plane

An outstanding problem in model-based recognition of objects by robot systems is how the system should proceed when the acquired data are insufficient to identify uniquely the model instance and model pose that best interpret the object. In this paper, we consider the situation in which some tactile data about the object are already available, but can be ambiguously interpreted. The problem is thus to acquire and process new tactile data in a sequential and efficient manner, so that the object can be recognised and its location and orientation determined. An object model, in this initial analysis of the problem, is a polygon located on a plane; the case of planar objects presents some interesting problems, and is also an important prelude to recognition of three-dimensional (polyhedral) objects.