SuctionPrompt: Visual-assisted Robotic Picking with a Suction Cup Using Vision-Language Models and Facile Hardware Design

The development of large language models and vision-language models (VLMs) has resulted in the increasing use of robotic systems in various fields. However, the effective integration of these models into real-world robotic tasks is a key challenge. We developed a versatile robotic system called SuctionPrompt that utilizes prompting techniques of VLMs combined with 3D detections to perform product-picking tasks in diverse and dynamic environments. Our method highlights the importance of integrating 3D spatial information with adaptive action planning to enable robots to approach and manipulate objects in novel environments. In the validation experiments, the system accurately selected suction points 75.4%, and achieved a 65.0% success rate in picking common items. This study highlights the effectiveness of VLMs in robotic manipulation tasks, even with simple 3D processing.

Probabilistic Slide-support Manipulation Planning in Clutter

To safely and efficiently extract an object from the clutter, this paper presents a bimanual manipulation planner in which one hand of the robot is used to slide the target object out of the clutter while the other hand is used to support the surrounding objects to prevent the clutter from collapsing. Our method uses a neural network to predict the physical phenomena of the clutter when the target object is moved. We generate the most efficient action based on the Monte Carlo tree search.The grasping and sliding actions are planned to minimize the number of motion sequences to pick the target object. In addition, the object to be supported is determined to minimize the position change of surrounding objects. Experiments with a real bimanual robot confirmed that the robot could retrieve the target object, reducing the total number of motion sequences and improving safety.