arXiv subjects

Yukiyasu Domae

Publications and source records attributed to Yukiyasu Domae.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2025

Prompt2Craft: Generating Functional Craft Assemblies with LLMs

Inspired by traditional handmade crafts, where a person improvises assemblies based on the available objects, we formally introduce the Craft Assembly Task. It is a robotic assembly task that involves building an accurate representation of a given target object using the available objects, which do not directly correspond to its parts. In this work, we focus on selecting the subset of available objects for the final craft, when the given input is an RGB image of the target in the wild. We use a mask segmentation neural network to identify visible parts, followed by retrieving labeled template meshes. These meshes undergo pose optimization to determine the most suitable template. Then, we propose to simplify the parts of the transformed template mesh to primitive shapes like cuboids or cylinders. Finally, we design a search algorithm to find correspondences in the scene based on local and global proportions. We develop baselines for comparison that consider all possible combinations, and choose the highest scoring combination for common metrics used in foreground maps and mask accuracy. Our approach achieves comparable results to the baselines for two different scenes, and we show qualitative results for an implementation in a real-world scenario.

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arXiv2025

NeuralMeshing: Complete Object Mesh Extraction from Casual Captures

How can we extract complete geometric models of objects that we encounter in our daily life, without having access to commercial 3D scanners? In this paper we present an automated system for generating geometric models of objects from two or more videos. Our system requires the specification of one known point in at least one frame of each video, which can be automatically determined using a fiducial marker such as a checkerboard or Augmented Reality (AR) marker. The remaining frames are automatically positioned in world space by using Structure-from-Motion techniques. By using multiple videos and merging results, a complete object mesh can be generated, without having to rely on hole filling. Code for our system is available from https://github.com/FlorisE/NeuralMeshing.

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arXiv2025

Robust Instant Policy: Leveraging Student's t-Regression Model for Robust In-context Imitation Learning of Robot Manipulation

Imitation learning (IL) aims to enable robots to perform tasks autonomously by observing a few human demonstrations. Recently, a variant of IL, called In-Context IL, utilized off-the-shelf large language models (LLMs) as instant policies that understand the context from a few given demonstrations to perform a new task, rather than explicitly updating network models with large-scale demonstrations. However, its reliability in the robotics domain is undermined by hallucination issues such as LLM-based instant policy, which occasionally generates poor trajectories that deviate from the given demonstrations. To alleviate this problem, we propose a new robust in-context imitation learning algorithm called the robust instant policy (RIP), which utilizes a Student's t-regression model to be robust against the hallucinated trajectories of instant policies to allow reliable trajectory generation. Specifically, RIP generates several candidate robot trajectories to complete a given task from an LLM and aggregates them using the Student's t-distribution, which is beneficial for ignoring outliers (i.e., hallucinations); thereby, a robust trajectory against hallucinations is generated. Our experiments, conducted in both simulated and real-world environments, show that RIP significantly outperforms state-of-the-art IL methods, with at least $26\%$ improvement in task success rates, particularly in low-data scenarios for everyday tasks. Video results available at https://sites.google.com/view/robustinstantpolicy.

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arXiv2025

Learning Bimanual Manipulation via Action Chunking and Inter-Arm Coordination with Transformers

Robots that can operate autonomously in a human living environment are necessary to have the ability to handle various tasks flexibly. One crucial element is coordinated bimanual movements that enable functions that are difficult to perform with one hand alone. In recent years, learning-based models that focus on the possibilities of bimanual movements have been proposed. However, the high degree of freedom of the robot makes it challenging to reason about control, and the left and right robot arms need to adjust their actions depending on the situation, making it difficult to realize more dexterous tasks. To address the issue, we focus on coordination and efficiency between both arms, particularly for synchronized actions. Therefore, we propose a novel imitation learning architecture that predicts cooperative actions. We differentiate the architecture for both arms and add an intermediate encoder layer, Inter-Arm Coordinated transformer Encoder (IACE), that facilitates synchronization and temporal alignment to ensure smooth and coordinated actions. To verify the effectiveness of our architectures, we perform distinctive bimanual tasks. The experimental results showed that our model demonstrated a high success rate for comparison and suggested a suitable architecture for the policy learning of bimanual manipulation.

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arXiv2024

SuctionPrompt: Visual-assisted Robotic Picking with a Suction Cup Using Vision-Language Models and Facile Hardware Design

The development of large language models and vision-language models (VLMs) has resulted in the increasing use of robotic systems in various fields. However, the effective integration of these models into real-world robotic tasks is a key challenge. We developed a versatile robotic system called SuctionPrompt that utilizes prompting techniques of VLMs combined with 3D detections to perform product-picking tasks in diverse and dynamic environments. Our method highlights the importance of integrating 3D spatial information with adaptive action planning to enable robots to approach and manipulate objects in novel environments. In the validation experiments, the system accurately selected suction points 75.4%, and achieved a 65.0% success rate in picking common items. This study highlights the effectiveness of VLMs in robotic manipulation tasks, even with simple 3D processing.

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arXiv2024

Visual Imitation Learning of Non-Prehensile Manipulation Tasks with Dynamics-Supervised Models

Unlike quasi-static robotic manipulation tasks like pick-and-place, dynamic tasks such as non-prehensile manipulation pose greater challenges, especially for vision-based control. Successful control requires the extraction of features relevant to the target task. In visual imitation learning settings, these features can be learnt by backpropagating the policy loss through the vision backbone. Yet, this approach tends to learn task-specific features with limited generalizability. Alternatively, learning world models can realize more generalizable vision backbones. Utilizing the learnt features, task-specific policies are subsequently trained. Commonly, these models are trained solely to predict the next RGB state from the current state and action taken. But only-RGB prediction might not fully-capture the task-relevant dynamics. In this work, we hypothesize that direct supervision of target dynamic states (Dynamics Mapping) can learn better dynamics-informed world models. Beside the next RGB reconstruction, the world model is also trained to directly predict position, velocity, and acceleration of environment rigid bodies. To verify our hypothesis, we designed a non-prehensile 2D environment tailored to two tasks: "Balance-Reaching" and "Bin-Dropping". When trained on the first task, dynamics mapping enhanced the task performance under different training configurations (Decoupled, Joint, End-to-End) and policy architectures (Feedforward, Recurrent). Notably, its most significant impact was for world model pretraining boosting the success rate from 21% to 85%. Although frozen dynamics-informed world models could generalize well to a task with in-domain dynamics, but poorly to a one with out-of-domain dynamics.

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arXiv2024

Component Selection for Craft Assembly Tasks

Inspired by traditional handmade crafts, where a person improvises assemblies based on the available objects, we formally introduce the Craft Assembly Task. It is a robotic assembly task that involves building an accurate representation of a given target object using the available objects, which do not directly correspond to its parts. In this work, we focus on selecting the subset of available objects for the final craft, when the given input is an RGB image of the target in the wild. We use a mask segmentation neural network to identify visible parts, followed by retrieving labelled template meshes. These meshes undergo pose optimization to determine the most suitable template. Then, we propose to simplify the parts of the transformed template mesh to primitive shapes like cuboids or cylinders. Finally, we design a search algorithm to find correspondences in the scene based on local and global proportions. We develop baselines for comparison that consider all possible combinations, and choose the highest scoring combination for common metrics used in foreground maps and mask accuracy. Our approach achieves comparable results to the baselines for two different scenes, and we show qualitative results for an implementation in a real-world scenario.

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arXiv2024

NeuralLabeling: A versatile toolset for labeling vision datasets using Neural Radiance Fields

We present NeuralLabeling, a labeling approach and toolset for annotating 3D scenes using either bounding boxes or meshes and generating segmentation masks, affordance maps, 2D bounding boxes, 3D bounding boxes, 6DOF object poses, depth maps, and object meshes. NeuralLabeling uses Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) as a renderer, allowing labeling to be performed using 3D spatial tools while incorporating geometric clues such as occlusions, relying only on images captured from multiple viewpoints as input. To demonstrate the applicability of NeuralLabeling to a practical problem in robotics, we added ground truth depth maps to 30000 frames of transparent object RGB and noisy depth maps of glasses placed in a dishwasher captured using an RGBD sensor, yielding the Dishwasher30k dataset. We show that training a simple deep neural network with supervision using the annotated depth maps yields a higher reconstruction performance than training with the previously applied weakly supervised approach. We also show how instance segmentation and depth completion datasets generated using NeuralLabeling can be incorporated into a robot application for grasping transparent objects placed in a dishwasher with an accuracy of 83.3%, compared to 16.3% without depth completion.

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arXiv2024

PEGASUS: Physically Enhanced Gaussian Splatting Simulation System for 6DoF Object Pose Dataset Generation

We introduce Physically Enhanced Gaussian Splatting Simulation System (PEGASUS) for 6DOF object pose dataset generation, a versatile dataset generator based on 3D Gaussian Splatting. Environment and object representations can be easily obtained using commodity cameras to reconstruct with Gaussian Splatting. PEGASUS allows the composition of new scenes by merging the respective underlying Gaussian Splatting point cloud of an environment with one or multiple objects. Leveraging a physics engine enables the simulation of natural object placement within a scene through interaction between meshes extracted for the objects and the environment. Consequently, an extensive amount of new scenes - static or dynamic - can be created by combining different environments and objects. By rendering scenes from various perspectives, diverse data points such as RGB images, depth maps, semantic masks, and 6DoF object poses can be extracted. Our study demonstrates that training on data generated by PEGASUS enables pose estimation networks to successfully transfer from synthetic data to real-world data. Moreover, we introduce the Ramen dataset, comprising 30 Japanese cup noodle items. This dataset includes spherical scans that captures images from both object hemisphere and the Gaussian Splatting reconstruction, making them compatible with PEGASUS.

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arXiv2024

Motion Priority Optimization Framework towards Automated and Teleoperated Robot Cooperation in Industrial Recovery Scenarios

In this study, we introduce an optimization framework aimed at enhancing the efficiency of motion priority design in scenarios involving automated and teleoperated robots within an industrial recovery context. The escalating utilization of industrial robots at manufacturing sites has been instrumental in mitigating human workload. Nevertheless, the challenge persists in achieving effective human-robot collaboration/cooperation where human workers and robots share a workspace for collaborative tasks. In the event of an industrial robot encountering a failure, it necessitates the suspension of the corresponding factory cell for safe recovery. Given the limited capacity of pre-programmed robots to rectify such failures, human intervention becomes imperative, requiring entry into the robot workspace to address the dropped object while the robot system is halted. This non-continuous manufacturing process results in productivity loss. Robotic teleoperation has emerged as a promising technology enabling human workers to undertake high-risk tasks remotely and safely. Our study advocates for the incorporation of robotic teleoperation in the recovery process during manufacturing failure scenarios, which is referred to as "Cooperative Tele-Recovery". Our proposed approach involves the formulation of priority rules designed to facilitate collision avoidance between manufacturing and recovery robots. This, in turn, ensures a continuous manufacturing process with minimal production loss within a configurable risk limitation. We present a comprehensive motion priority optimization framework, encompassing an HRC simulator-based priority optimization and a cooperative multi-robot controller, to identify optimal parameters for the priority function. The framework dynamically adjusts the allocation of motion priorities for manufacturing and recovery robots while adhering to predefined risk limitations.

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arXiv2023

Learning to Dexterously Pick or Separate Tangled-Prone Objects for Industrial Bin Picking

Industrial bin picking for tangled-prone objects requires the robot to either pick up untangled objects or perform separation manipulation when the bin contains no isolated objects. The robot must be able to flexibly perform appropriate actions based on the current observation. It is challenging due to high occlusion in the clutter, elusive entanglement phenomena, and the need for skilled manipulation planning. In this paper, we propose an autonomous, effective and general approach for picking up tangled-prone objects for industrial bin picking. First, we learn PickNet - a network that maps the visual observation to pixel-wise possibilities of picking isolated objects or separating tangled objects and infers the corresponding grasp. Then, we propose two effective separation strategies: Dropping the entangled objects into a buffer bin to reduce the degree of entanglement; Pulling to separate the entangled objects in the buffer bin planned by PullNet - a network that predicts position and direction for pulling from visual input. To efficiently collect data for training PickNet and PullNet, we embrace the self-supervised learning paradigm using an algorithmic supervisor in a physics simulator. Real-world experiments show that our policy can dexterously pick up tangled-prone objects with success rates of 90%. We further demonstrate the generalization of our policy by picking a set of unseen objects. Supplementary material, code, and videos can be found at https://xinyiz0931.github.io/tangle.

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arXiv2023

A Closed-Loop Bin Picking System for Entangled Wire Harnesses using Bimanual and Dynamic Manipulation

This paper addresses the challenge of industrial bin picking using entangled wire harnesses. Wire harnesses are essential in manufacturing but poses challenges in automation due to their complex geometries and propensity for entanglement. Our previous work tackled this issue by proposing a quasi-static pulling motion to separate the entangled wire harnesses. However, it still lacks sufficiency and generalization to various shapes and structures. In this paper, we deploy a dual-arm robot that can grasp, extract and disentangle wire harnesses from dense clutter using dynamic manipulation. The robot can swing to dynamically discard the entangled objects and regrasp to adjust the undesirable grasp pose. To improve the robustness and accuracy of the system, we leverage a closed-loop framework that uses haptic feedback to detect entanglement in real-time and flexibly adjust system parameters. Our bin picking system achieves an overall success rate of 91.2% in the real-world experiments using two different types of long wire harnesses. It demonstrates the effectiveness of our system in handling various wire harnesses for industrial bin picking.

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arXiv2023

Force Map: Learning to Predict Contact Force Distribution from Vision

When humans see a scene, they can roughly imagine the forces applied to objects based on their experience and use them to handle the objects properly. This paper considers transferring this "force-visualization" ability to robots. We hypothesize that a rough force distribution (named "force map") can be utilized for object manipulation strategies even if accurate force estimation is impossible. Based on this hypothesis, we propose a training method to predict the force map from vision. To investigate this hypothesis, we generated scenes where objects were stacked in bulk through simulation and trained a model to predict the contact force from a single image. We further applied domain randomization to make the trained model function on real images. The experimental results showed that the model trained using only synthetic images could predict approximate patterns representing the contact areas of the objects even for real images. Then, we designed a simple algorithm to plan a lifting direction using the predicted force distribution. We confirmed that using the predicted force distribution contributes to finding natural lifting directions for typical real-world scenes. Furthermore, the evaluation through simulations showed that the disturbance caused to surrounding objects was reduced by 26 % (translation displacement) and by 39 % (angular displacement) for scenes where objects were overlapping.

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arXiv2023

Learning Efficient Policies for Picking Entangled Wire Harnesses: An Approach to Industrial Bin Picking

Wire harnesses are essential connecting components in manufacturing industry but are challenging to be automated in industrial tasks such as bin picking. They are long, flexible and tend to get entangled when randomly placed in a bin. This makes it difficult for the robot to grasp a single one in dense clutter. Besides, training or collecting data in simulation is challenging due to the difficulties in modeling the combination of deformable and rigid components for wire harnesses. In this work, instead of directly lifting wire harnesses, we propose to grasp and extract the target following a circle-like trajectory until it is untangled. We learn a policy from real-world data that can infer grasps and separation actions from visual observation. Our policy enables the robot to efficiently pick and separate entangled wire harnesses by maximizing success rates and reducing execution time. To evaluate our policy, we present a set of real-world experiments on picking wire harnesses. Our policy achieves an overall 84.6% success rate compared with 49.2% in baseline. We also evaluate the effectiveness of our policy under different clutter scenarios using unseen types of wire harnesses. Results suggest that our approach is feasible for handling wire harnesses in industrial bin picking.

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arXiv2022

A Topological Solution of Entanglement for Complex-shaped Parts in Robotic Bin-picking

This paper addresses the problem of picking up only one object at a time avoiding any entanglement in bin-picking. To cope with a difficult case where the complex-shaped objects are heavily entangled together, we propose a topology-based method that can generate non-tangle grasp positions on a single depth image. The core technique is entanglement map, which is a feature map to measure the entanglement possibilities obtained from the input image. We use the entanglement map to select probable regions containing graspable objects. The optimum grasping pose is detected from the selected regions considering the collision between robot hand and objects. Experimental results show that our analytic method provides a more comprehensive and intuitive observation of entanglement and exceeds previous learning-based work in success rates. Especially, our topology-based method does not rely on any object models or time-consuming training process, so that it can be easily adapted to more complex bin-picking scenes.

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arXiv2021

Material Classification Using Active Temperature Controllable Robotic Gripper

Recognition techniques allow robots to make proper planning and control strategies to manipulate various objects. Object recognition is more reliable when made by combining several percepts, e.g., vision and haptics. One of the distinguishing features of each object's material is its heat properties, and classification can exploit heat transfer, similarly to human thermal sensation. Thermal-based recognition has the advantage of obtaining contact surface information in realtime by simply capturing temperature change using a tiny and cheap sensor. However, heat transfer between a robot surface and a contact object is strongly affected by the initial temperature and environmental conditions. A given object's material cannot be recognized when its temperature is the same as the robotic grippertip. We present a material classification system using active temperature controllable robotic gripper to induce heat flow. Subsequently, our system can recognize materials independently from their ambient temperature. The robotic gripper surface can be regulated to any temperature that differentiates it from the touched object's surface. We conducted some experiments by integrating the temperature control system with the Academic SCARA Robot, classifying them based on a long short-term memory (LSTM) using temperature data obtained from grasping target objects.

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arXiv2021

Selecting and Designing Grippers for an Assembly Task in a Structured Approach

In this paper, we present a structured approach to selecting and designing a set of grippers for an assembly task. Compared to current experience-based gripper design method, our approach accelerates the design process by automatically generating a set of initial design options on gripper type and parameters according to the CAD models of assembly components. We use mesh segmentation techniques to segment the assembly components and fit the segmented parts with shape primitives, according to the predefined correspondence between primitive shape and gripper type, suitable gripper types and parameters can be selected and extracted from the fitted shape primitives. Moreover, we incorporate the assembly constraints in the further evaluation of the initially obtained gripper types and parameters. Considering the affordance of the segmented parts and the collision avoidance between the gripper and the subassemblies, applicable gripper types and parameters can be filtered from the initial options. Among the applicable gripper configurations, we further optimize number of grippers for performing the assembly task, by exploring the gripper that is able to handle multiple assembly components during the assembly. Finally, the feasibility of the designed grippers is experimentally verified by assembling a part of an industrial product.

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arXiv2020

Planning a Sequence of Base Positions for a Mobile Manipulator to Perform Multiple Pick-and-Place Tasks

In this paper, we present a planner that plans a sequence of base positions for a mobile manipulator to efficiently and robustly collect objects stored in distinct trays. We achieve high efficiency by exploring the common areas where a mobile manipulator can grasp objects stored in multiple trays simultaneously and move the mobile manipulator to the common areas to reduce the time needed for moving the mobile base. We ensure robustness by optimizing the base position with the best clearance to positioning uncertainty so that a mobile manipulator can complete the task even if there is a certain deviation from the planned base positions. Besides, considering different styles of object placement in the tray, we analyze feasible schemes for dynamically updating the base positions based on either the remaining objects or the target objects to be picked in one round of the tasks. In the experiment part, we examine our planner on various scenarios, including different object placement: (1) Regularly placed toy objects; (2) Randomly placed industrial parts; and different schemes for online execution: (1) Apply globally static base positions; (2) Dynamically update the base positions. The experiment results demonstrate the efficiency, robustness and feasibility of the proposed method.

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