Object Recognition and Manipulation in Robotics (ORMR)

EU CHIST-ERA Research projects

The ability to recognise and manipulate objects is central to robotics. For example, it might be useful for a robot to recognise a certain object requested by a user, and to determine if and how the object can be safely grasped in order to fetch it. However, despite decades of research, such abilities remain limited in practice. Some of the limiting factors are a paucity of usable, large data sets for training robust models for the tasks under study, a lack of objective evaluation protocols to test these models in a comparable way, and more generally the challenge of reproducing results.

The purpose of this project is to progress the field of robotic perception and manipulation, building solid scientific foundations of experimental reproducibility through transparent sharing of data and methods. It challenges researchers to work in collaborative projects, which will simultaneously address the three pillars of recognition, manipulation and reproducibility within this domain.

Key challenges are :

• Perceiving or predicting physical properties (shape, orientation, mass, fragility, etc.) of objects or environments;

• Handling of unknown objects and environments;

• Developing systems which are capable of operating in ambiguous contexts;

• Managing the perception-action loop;

• Interaction and cooperation with humans or other robots;

• Designing safe, secure, robust and ethically-sound systems;

• Independent and objective evaluation;

• Criteria and measures for reproducibility.

Academic institutions

Funding bodies