Suction cups offer a useful gripping solution, particularly in industrial robotics and warehouse applications. Vision-based grasp algorithms, like Dex-Net, show promise but struggle to accurately perceive dark or reflective objects, sub-resolution features, and occlusions, resulting in suction cup grip failures. In our prior work, we designed the Smart Suction Cup, which estimates the flow state within the cup and provides a mechanically resilient end-effector that can inform arm feedback control through a sense of touch. We then demonstrated how this cup's signals enable haptically-driven search behaviors for better grasping points on adversarial objects. This prior work uses a model-based approach to predict the desired motion direction, which opens up the question: does a data-driven approach perform better? This technical report provides an initial analysis harnessing the data previously collected. Specifically, we compare the model-based method with a preliminary data-driven approach to accurately estimate lateral pose adjustment direction for improved grasp success.
@article{arxiv.2401.06354,
title = {Initial Analysis of Data-Driven Haptic Search for the Smart Suction Cup},
author = {Jungpyo Lee and Sebastian D. Lee and Tae Myung Huh and Hannah S. Stuart},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2401.06354},
year = {2024}
}