A probabilistic method to analyze ambiguous contact situations

An approach to analyzing ambiguous contact situations in an uncertain robotic environment is presented. When invoked by the occurrence of a contact, the analysis proceeds by generating a set of hypotheses on the contact, out of which the valid one is detected by testing the feasibility of certain motions, i.e., performing movability tests. Emphasis is placed on the generation of the hypotheses. All parts of the analysis are based upon the same probabilistic uncertainty model, which is given