Efficient exploration and recognition of convex objects based on haptic perception

The paper describes an efficient technique for recognition of convex objects from tactile sensing. The technique is based on the development of internal and external volumetric approximations of the unknown object, and exploits an effective feature selection strategy along with early pruning of incompatible objects to improve recognition performance. Exploration strategies conceived for a single-finger probing device rely on the developed volumetric approximations to guide sensing along directions where uncertainty about the explored object is larger, and can take into account exploration costs.