Visual Tracking of a Deformable Package of Plastic Wrapped Paper Rolls in Bimanual Manipulation

This work presents a method for visual tracking of a large package containing plastic wrapped paper rolls in bimanual manipulation tasks. The type of package that was used is often found on industrial pallets in the tissue market for wholesale distribution. The proposed approach adopts a model that consists of a set of semi-rigid sub-packages, and it provides a real-time estimation of the package deformation. The perception system utilizes a fixed camera and the algorithm is based on tracking low-level image features. Experimental evaluation was performed in a laboratory setup including a motion capture system for ground truth measurements. Results show that the proposed deformation model achieves an accuracy of less than two centimeters.