ReFlow6D: Refraction-Guided Transparent Object 6D Pose Estimation via Intermediate Representation Learning

Transparent objects are ubiquitous in daily life, making their perception and robotics manipulation important. However, they present a major challenge due to their distinct refractive and reflective properties when it comes to accurately estimating the 6D pose. To solve this, we present <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">ReFlow6D</i>, a novel method for transparent object 6D pose estimation that harnesses the <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">refractive-intermediate representation</i>. Unlike conventional approaches, our method leverages a feature space impervious to changes in RGB image space and independent of depth information. Drawing inspiration from image matting, we model the deformation of the light path through transparent objects, yielding a unique object-specific intermediate representation guided by light refraction that is independent of the environment in which objects are observed. By integrating these intermediate features into the pose estimation network, we show that <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">ReFlow6D</i> achieves precise 6D pose estimation of transparent objects, using only RGB images as input. Our method further introduces a novel transparent object compositing loss, fostering the generation of superior <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">refractive-intermediate</i> features. Empirical evaluations show that our approach significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods on <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">TOD</i> and <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Trans32K-6D</i> datasets. Robot grasping experiments further demonstrate that <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">ReFlow6D's</i> pose estimation accuracy effectively translates to real-world robotics task.