Event

Maryland Robotics Student Seminar: Towards Interactive Perception_Synergy of Action and Perception

Friday, September 10, 2021
2:00 p.m.
IRB-4143
Lena Johnson
301 405 8870
ljohns14@umd.edu

Towards Interactive Perception: Synergy of Action and Perception in Robots

Chahat Deep Singh
PhD Student, Computer Science, Perception and Robotics Group
Advisor: Dr. Yiannis Aloimonos

Abstract
Recent advances in object segmentation have demonstrated that deep neural networks excel at object segmentation for specific classes in color and depth images. However, their performance is dictated by the number of classes and objects used for training, thereby hindering generalization to never-seen objects or zero-shot samples. To exacerbate the problem further, object segmentation using image frames relies on recognition and pattern matching cues. Instead, we utilize the ‘active’ nature of a robot and its ability to ‘interact’ with the environment to induce additional geometric constraints for segmenting zero-shot samples. In this paper, we present the first framework to segment unknown objects in a cluttered scene by repeatedly ‘nudging’ at the objects and moving them to obtain additional motion cues at every step using only a monochrome monocular camera. We call our framework NudgeSeg. These motion cues are used to refine the segmentation masks. We successfully test our approach to segment novel objects in various cluttered scenes and provide an extensive study with image and motion segmentation methods.

About the Robotics Student Seminars
The Robotics Student Seminars at the University of Maryland College Park are a student-run series of talks given by current robotics students.

The purpose of these talks is to:

• Encourage interaction between Robotics students from different subfields;
• Provide an opportunity for Robotics students to be aware of and possibly get involved in the research their peers are conducting;
• Provide an opportunity for Robotics students to receive feedback on their current research;
• Provide speaking opportunities for Robotics students.