Near Real-Time Robotic Grasping of Novel Objects in Cluttered Scenes

In this paper, we investigate the problem of grasping novel objects in unstructured environments. Object geometry, reachability, and force closure analysis are considered to address this problem. A framework is proposed for grasping unknown objects by localizing contact regions on the contours formed by a set of depth edges generated from a single view 2D depth image. Specifically, contact regions are determined based on edge geometric features derived from analysis of the depth map data. Finally, the performance of the approach is successfully validated by applying it to the scenes with both single and multiple objects, in both MATLAB simulation and experiments using a Kinect One sensor and a Baxter manipulator.