RGB-D object detection and semantic segmentation for autonomous manipulation in clutter

Autonomous robotic manipulation in clutter is challenging. A large variety of objects must be perceived in complex scenes, where they are partially occluded and embedded among many distractors, often in restricted spaces. To tackle these challenges, we developed a deep-learning approach that combines object detection and semantic segmentation. The manipulation scenes are captured with RGB-D cameras, for which we developed a depth fusion method. Employing pretrained features makes learning from small annotated robotic datasets possible. We evaluate our approach on two challenging datasets: one captured for the Amazon Picking Challenge 2016, where our team NimbRo came in second in the Stowing and third in the Picking task; and one captured in disaster-response scenarios. The experiments show that object detection and semantic segmentation complement each other and can be combined to yield reliable object perception.