[ut.ai] Robotics and Perception: Site Visit and Seminar at Queen's

itrctor@csri.toronto.edu (Ron Riesenbach) (09/09/89)

                                      SEMINAR


                     Active Perception and Exploratory Robotics:
                             Examples of Disassembly

                                Dr. Ruzena Bajcsy
                           University of Pennsylvania
                 Chairman of Dept. of Computing and Information Science
                          Director of Robotics GRASP Lab


                            Hosted by Dr. Susan Lederman
      Dept. of Psychology, Robotics and Perception Lab, Queen's University


                                  Presented by
                      Information Technology Research Centre


Date:      Thursday, October 5, 1989
Time:      2:30 - 4:00 p.m.
Location:  Rm. TC205,  New Technology Bldg., Queen's University, Union and
           Arch St., Kingston, Ont.

ABSTRACT:
   
    It has long been recognized by the discipline of perceptual psychology
that perception is an active process that requires purposive exploration of
the environment.  In this talk, I will consider specifically the visual and
haptic modalities; the latter typically involves purposive touch.  Our goal
is to determine the primitive actions and attributes derivable from visual
and haptic inputs that are necessary for disassembling a scene or a two-part
object.  I shall present a theory and two supporting experiments.
 
   While much attention has been paid to visual information processing by
human and machine systems, the study of haptic processing has received
considerably less.  Yet vision is clearly limited, especially when
distinguishing between scenes involving separate objects versus the parts of
a single object.

   Consider, for example, a cup resting on a saucer.  From vision alone, it
is not possible to determine whether the saucer is permanently attached to
the saucer beneath, or whether it is simply resting there.  The only way to
disambiguate the two possibilities is to lift or shake the cup, that is, to
perform some form of manipulatory operation.  This suggests to us that the
processing is data-driven, permitting us to differentiate solid, separable
objects, and to describe them in terms of their structural and geometric
properties.  Our aim is to explore complex scenes composed of multiple objects
in arbitrary positions.  We hypothesize that this cannot be done by vision
alone, that one needs both haptic information processing and manipulatory
capabilities.
 
   Much of the stimulation for this work, especially in the area of haptic
information processing, derives from discussions with and research by
Lederman (Queen's University) and Klatzky (University of California at Santa
Barbara).
 
____________________________________________________________________________
This event is free to all industrial affiliates of the ITRC as well as faculty
and students at the participating institutions.  Industrial affiliates may
register by calling Rosanna Reid (416) 978-8558 by October 2nd, 1989.
Industrial Affiliates are also invited to join the speaker for lunch and tours
of the labs prior to the talk.
____________________________________________________________________________


                                 A G E N D A

10:30 am         Tour of the laboratories in Computing & Information Sciences,
Rm. 327          Electrical Engineering and Psychology departments involved in
Humphrey Hall    Robotics and Perception research.  Demonstrations will be
                 presented.

12:30 pm         Luncheon and informal discussions
Faculty Club
Board Room   


2:30 pm          Active Perception and Exploratory Robotics:  Examples of
Rm. TC205        Disassembly, Seminar by Dr. Ruzena Bajcsy, University of
New Technology   Pennsylvania.
Building

4:00 pm          End