New Perception of Fluffy Surfaces

Scene material recognition is a valuable perceptual ability for robots. However, current methods fail to provide robust solution for indoor surrounding material recognition. As human beings are able to immediately understand properties of surrounding materials, especially when it concerns smooth fluffy materials, we believe robots should be equipped with similar abilities. In this paper we explore a new idea for fluffy surface perception for robots based on above hypothesis. The aim is to enable robots to distinguish smooth and fluffy surfaces without touching them. This is achieved through calculating image matchability map from video cameras. Through measuring the similarity of images captured from different viewpoints, robots are able to immediately recognize whether it is a fluffy material. The method has been validated by primary experiments. Our results show that robots can have a sense of material properties for fluffy materials without touching them or any prior knowledge.