Precise perception of contact interactions is essential for fine-grained manipulation skills for robots. In this paper, we present the design of feedback skills for robots that must learn to stack complex-shaped objects on top of each other (see Fig.1). To design such a system, a robot should be able to reason about the stability of placement from very gentle contact interactions. Our results demonstrate that it is possible to infer the stability of object placement based on tactile readings during contact formation between the object and its environment. In particular, we estimate the contact patch between a grasped object and its environment using force and tactile observations to estimate the stability of the object during a contact formation. The contact patch could be used to estimate the stability of the object upon release of the grasp. The proposed method is demonstrated in various pairs of objects that are used in a very popular board game.

翻译：接触交互的精确感知对于机器人实现精细操作技能至关重要。本文针对需学习堆叠复杂形状物体的机器人，提出了反馈技能设计方法（见图1）。为设计此类系统，机器人需能从极其轻柔的接触交互中推理放置稳定性。研究结果表明，通过物体与环境接触形成过程中的触觉读数，可推断物体放置的稳定性。具体而言，我们利用力和触觉观测值估算被夹持物体与环境的接触补丁，从而评估接触形成过程中物体的稳定性。该接触补丁可用于估算释放夹持后物体的稳定性。所提方法已在热门棋盘游戏中的多种物体组合上得到验证。