Handling of Objects with Marks by a Robot

This paper presents a robot system for handling various objects in home or office environments (see video). A fixed manipulator utilizes marks on objects for handling and motion planning. A mark consists of two parts. One is the outer part, which indicates its pose (In this paper, "pose" denotes 3D position and orientation.), and the other is a QR code, which is a kind of 2D barcode. A QR code is stored information of an object (e.g. its name). A user attaches several marks on each object. The manipulator accesses the information using a camera in its hand. The robot can decide its complex handling motion based on the information in QR codes, pose of the objects, which are estimated from pose of marks, and signals from proximity sensors. Experiments are conducted to verify the whole system. Manipulation, Motion planning, Artificial mark, Sensor, Measurement.