Locating Transparent Objects to Millimetre Accuracy
This addresses a specific problem in robotics for precise manipulation of transparent objects, but it is incremental as it builds on existing registration techniques.
The paper tackles the problem of accurately locating transparent objects like glass, which is challenging due to light transmission, and demonstrates a method using a Laser Range Finder to achieve millimetre accuracy in pose estimation for a non-planar side car glass.
Transparent surfaces, such as glass, transmit most of the visible light that falls on them, making accurate pose estimation challenging. We propose a method to locate glass objects to millimetre accuracy using a simple Laser Range Finder (LRF) attached to the robot end-effector. The method, derived from a physical understanding of laser-glass interactions, consists of (i) sampling points on the glass border by looking at the glass surface from an angle of approximately 45 degrees, and (ii) performing Iterative Closest Point registration on the sampled points. We verify experimentally that the proposed method can locate a transparent, non-planar, side car glass to millimetre accuracy.