The YCB object and Model set: Towards common benchmarks for manipulation research

TLDR

A survey of existing object benchmarks reveals gaps in coverage and highlights limitations of current datasets. The authors introduce the Yale‑CMU‑Berkeley (YCB) Object and Model set as a comprehensive benchmark for robotic grasping and manipulation. The YCB set comprises diverse daily‑life objects with varied shapes, sizes, textures, weights, and rigidities, accompanied by high‑resolution RGB‑D scans, physical properties, and geometric models to facilitate integration into manipulation and planning software. The survey identifies shortcomings in existing benchmarks, and the YCB set will be freely distributed to research groups worldwide through tutorials and at a reasonable purchase cost.

Abstract

In this paper we present the Yale-CMU-Berkeley (YCB) Object and Model set, intended to be used for benchmarking in robotic grasping and manipulation research. The objects in the set are designed to cover various aspects of the manipulation problem; it includes objects of daily life with different shapes, sizes, textures, weight and rigidity, as well as some widely used manipulation tests. The associated database provides high-resolution RGBD scans, physical properties and geometric models of the objects for easy incorporation into manipulation and planning software platforms. A comprehensive literature survey on existing benchmarks and object datasets is also presented and their scope and limitations are discussed. The set will be freely distributed to research groups worldwide at a series of tutorials at robotics conferences, and will be otherwise available at a reasonable purchase cost.