Shape and pose recovery from planar pushing

Abstract

Tactile exploration refers to the use of physical interaction to infer object properties. In this work, we study the feasibility of recovering the shape and pose of a movable object from observing a series of contacts. In particular, we approach the problem of estimating the shape and trajectory of a planar object lying on a frictional surface, and being pushed by a frictional probe. The probe, when in contact with the object, makes observations of the location of contact and the contact normal.