Learning to Double Guess: An Active Perception Approach for Estimating the Center of Mass of Arbitrary Objects

Manipulating arbitrary objects in unstructured environments is a significant challenge in robotics, primarily due to difficulties in determining an object's center of mass. This paper introduces U-GRAPH: Uncertainty-Guided Rotational Active Perception with Haptics, a novel framework to enhance the center of mass estimation using active perception. Traditional methods often rely on single interaction and are limited by the inherent inaccuracies of Force-Torque (F/T) sensors. Our approach circumvents these limitations by integrating a Bayesian Neural Network (BNN) to quantify uncertainty and guide the robotic system through multiple, information-rich interactions via grid search and a neural network that scores each action. We demonstrate the remarkable generalizability and transferability of our method with training on a small dataset with limited variation yet still perform well on unseen complex real-world objects.

An Intelligent Robotic System for Perceptive Pancake Batter Stirring and Precise Pouring

Cooking robots have long been desired by the commercial market, while the technical challenge is still significant. A major difficulty comes from the demand of perceiving and handling liquid with different properties. This paper presents a robot system that mixes batter and makes pancakes out of it, where understanding and handling the viscous liquid is an essential component. The system integrates Haptic Sensing and control algorithms to autonomously stir flour and water to achieve the desired batter uniformity, estimate the batter's properties such as the water-flour ratio and liquid level, as well as perform precise manipulations to pour the batter into any specified shape. Experimental results show the system's capability to always produce batter of desired uniformity, estimate water-flour ratio and liquid level precisely, and accurately pour it into complex shapes. This research showcases the potential for robots to assist in kitchens and step towards commercial culinary automation.