High-Accuracy 3D Sensing for Mobile Manipulation: Improving Object Detection and Door Opening

High-resolution 3D scanning can improve the performance of object detection and door opening, two tasks critical to the operation of mobile manipulators in cluttered homes and workplaces. We discuss how high-resolution depth information can be combined with visual imagery to improve the performance of object detection beyond what is (currently) achievable with 2D images alone, and we present door-opening and inventory-taking experiments.