Neuromorphic Event Camera-Based Object Recognition and Grasping Position Detection Using a Transfer Learning-Enhanced Multi-Task Model

Object recognition and grasping position detection are critical tasks in robotic manipulation, particularly when operating in dynamic and unstructured environments. This paper presents the Channel Sharpening Attention-based Adaptive Inception Network (CSA-AInceptNet), a novel multi-task learning model designed for these tasks using event camera data. The proposed architecture integrates channel sharpening attention with adaptive inception networks to enhance feature extraction and improve robustness. The model’s performance is evaluated on two state-of-the-art event camera datasets, E-Grasp and Neuro-Grasp. On the E-Grasp dataset, CSA-AIncepNet achieves a remarkable accuracy of 99.47% and a mean Intersection over Union (IoU) of 0.9370, significantly surpassing existing methods. On the Neuro-Grasp dataset, leveraging transfer learning, the model attains 98.58% accuracy and a mean IoU of 0.4897, demonstrating strong generalization capabilities across datasets. Comparative analyses and ablation studies further validate the effectiveness of the proposed architecture, highlighting its superiority over conventional models like ConvNeXt, DarkNet, DenseNet, and VGG16. The results establish CSA-AIncepNet as a robust solution for event-based object recognition and grasping detection, paving the way for advancements in human-robot collaboration and dynamic robotic manipulation. Note to Practitioners—This work provides a practical solution for improving object recognition and grasping position detection in robotic systems, particularly in unpredictable and fast-changing real-world environments. By leveraging event camera data, the proposed approach enables robots to efficiently identify objects and determine optimal grasping positions, even under challenging conditions. The results highlight the model’s ability to outperform existing methods, making it highly suitable for applications such as human-robot collaboration and precise object handling. This advancement has significant implications for industries like manufacturing, logistics, and healthcare, where robots must interact with objects quickly and accurately. Practitioners can adopt this method to enhance robotic performance, reduce errors, and improve operational efficiency. Future work could focus on testing the model in more complex environments and adapting it for real-time deployment in dynamic settings.