In this work, we present a method to estimate the mass distribution of a rigid object through robotic interactions and tactile feedback. This is a challenging problem because of the complexity of physical dynamics modeling and the action dependencies across the model parameters. We propose a sequential estimation strategy combined with a set of robot action selection rules based on the analytical formulation of a discrete-time dynamics model. To evaluate the performance of our approach, we also manufactured re-configurable block objects that allow us to modify the object mass distribution while having access to the ground truth values. We compare our approach against multiple baselines and show that our approach can estimate the mass distribution with around 10% error, while the baselines have errors ranging from 18% to 68%.

翻译：本文提出了一种通过机器人交互与触觉反馈估计刚体质量分布的方法。由于物理动力学建模的复杂性以及模型参数间的动作依赖关系，该问题具有显著挑战性。我们提出一种基于离散时间动力学模型解析公式的序贯估计策略，并配套设计了一套机器人动作选择规则。为评估方法性能，我们制造了可重构块状物体，允许在获取真实质量分布值的同时调整物体质量分布。通过与多个基准方法对比，我们的方法可将质量分布估计误差控制在约10%以内，而对比方法的误差范围介于18%至68%之间。