2D Skeleton-Based Keypoint Generation Method for Grasping Objects with Roughly Uniform Height Variation

Robotic grasping poses a fundamental challenge in robotics, particularly when dealing with unknown objects. This skill has always been a focal point in robotics research due to its fundamental importance and inherent complexity. Recent advances utilize state-of-the-art learning techniques, including deep learning and deep reinforcement learning, presenting their unique set of challenges. Training these models requires extensive data and computational resources, with the generalization to unknown objects presenting a significant obstacle for robots. This paper presents a comprehensive approach to unknown object robotic grasping, with a specific focus on top-down grasping actions. The process encompasses image preprocessing, the application of the Straight Skeleton (StSkel) method, and the systematic generation of grasp keypoints when applied to a selection of objects from the Dex-Net dataset. During the evaluation, the analysis incorporated crucial metrics, including the number of detected grasp keypoints for each object, the count of successfully generated grasp pairs, the overall success rate, and the success rate when considering the top 5 ranked grasp pairs. One of the notable strengths of this approach lies in its adaptability to a wide array of objects, ranging from simple shapes to complex ones. The proposed approach in this paper paves the way for automatically labeling grasping datasets, providing a valuable asset for developing auto-generating Deep-RL models. The StSkel method effectively captures essential structural information, making it suitable for real-world applications involving diverse objects. The experimental outcomes affirm the robustness and adaptability of the approach, as it most often achieved a high success rate in generating viable pairs of grasping points for most tested objects. Even complex objects yield impressive results, demonstrating the method’s potential for real-world applications in grasping unknown objects.