Sensor fusion system for improving the recognition of 3D object

Human being recognizes the physical world by integrating a great variety of sensory inputs, the information acquired by their own action, and their knowledge of the world using hierarchically parallel-distributed mechanism. In this paper, authors propose the sensor fusion system that can recognize multiple 3D objects from 2D projection images and tactile information. The proposed system focuses on improving object recognition rate. Unlike the conventional object recognition system that uses image sensor alone, the proposed method uses tactual sensors in addition to visual sensor. Tactual signals are obtained from the reaction force by the pressure sensors at the fingertips when unknown objects are grasped by four-fingered robot hand. The experiment evaluates the recognition rate and the number of learning iterations of various objects. The experimental results show that the proposed system can improve recognition rate and reduce learning time. These results verify the effectiveness of the proposed sensor fusion system as 3D object recognition scheme