Autonomous Rearrangement Planning Using Object Similarity Learning

This study investigates the integration of artificial intelligence in robotics assembly systems, focusing on enhancing flexibility and adaptability in dynamic environments where the robot might not be given the precise objects of the intended construction. To this end, a developed approach is presented which is based on object detection, similarity assessment, and sequence planning for autonomous construction tasks. The system utilizes a YOLOv8 model for object detection and a Siamese network architecture, which facilitates object replacement. It processes two input images, one representing the target structure and another showing the available objects, extracting attributes such as bounding boxes, centers, and orientations. An exact object-matching step is performed before a two-stage similarity assessment. The two-stage similarity assessment prioritizes single-object matches and employs a multi-object similarity network only when necessary. This multi-stage approach is designed to maintain high similarity to the intended design while minimizing possible object shortcomings. During the construction phase, motion planning is performed using a 3-degrees-of-freedom Delta parallel robot, and a 2-finger gripper is utilized for robotics grasping. The results of this study, conducted on wooden bricks of varying shapes and sizes, demonstrate the effectiveness of the YOLOv8 model for object detection, achieving over 80% accuracy across 18 classes with a classification loss of approximately 0.25. Additionally, the Siamese network performed robustly, with a loss of less than 0.01 for both single and multiple object comparisons.