Automatic determination of topological contacts in the presence of sensing uncertainties

A method for obtaining sufficient topological contact information from the current position/orientation data for the objects and geometric models involved, taking into account sensing uncertainties, is introduced. The information obtained can serve as a basis for further and more accurate extraction of the topological contact data using additional sensing means, such as vision and force/moment sensing. The aim is to achieve automatic recognition of unknown contact situations in spite of uncertainties. The method is discussed in detail for contacts between 2-D polygons and can be extended to 3-D polyhedra. The key idea is to discretize the continuous region of uncertain configurations of an object so that the topological contacts formed at those finite and discrete configurations constitute all possible contact situations taking into account uncertainties. To accomplish this, some general geometric constraints on the objects, which are easy to satisfy, are imposed