Model based techniques for robotic servoing and grasping

A robotic manipulation of objects typically involves object detection/recognition, servoing to the object, alignment and grasping. To perform fine alignment and final grasping, it is usually necessary to estimate the position and orientation (pose) of the object. In this paper we present a model based tracking system used to estimate and continuously update the pose of the object to be manipulated. Here, a wire-frame model is used to find and track features in the consequent images. One of the important parts of the system is the ability to automatically initiate the tracking process. The strength of the system is the ability to operate in an domestic environment (living room) with changing lighting and background conditions.