Recognizing polygonal parts from width measurements

Abstract Automatic recognition of parts is an important problem in many industrial applications. One model of the problem is: given a finite set of polygonal parts, use a set of “width” measurements taken by a parallel-jaw gripper to determine which part is present. We study the problem of computing efficient strategies (“grasp plans”), with the goal to minimize the number of measurements necessary in the worst case. We show that finding a minimum length grasp plan is NP -hard, and give a polynomial time approximation algorithm that is simple and produces a solution that is within a log factor from optimal.

[1]  Kenneth Y. Goldberg,et al.  Manipulating algebraic parts in the plane , 1995, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[2]  R. Govindan,et al.  Optimal strategies for recognizing polygonal parts , 1994, Proceedings of the 1994 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[3]  David S. Johnson,et al.  Approximation algorithms for combinatorial problems , 1973, STOC.

[4]  Shape from Diameter: Recognizing Polygonal Parts with . . . , 1993 .

[5]  Steven Skiena,et al.  Decision trees for geometric models , 1993, SCG '93.

[6]  John F. Canny,et al.  "RISC" industrial robotics: recent results and open problems , 1994, Proceedings of the 1994 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[7]  Bernard M. E. Moret,et al.  Decision Trees and Diagrams , 1982, CSUR.

[8]  Ronald L. Rivest,et al.  Constructing Optimal Binary Decision Trees is NP-Complete , 1976, Inf. Process. Lett..

[9]  Yan-Bin Jia,et al.  Geometric Sensing of Known Planar Shapes , 1996, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[10]  Steven Skiena,et al.  Point Probe Decision Trees for Geometric Concept Classes , 1993, WADS.