Automation of Product Display Using Pose Estimation Based on Height Direction Estimation

The development of product display robots in retail stores is progressing as an application of industrial robots. Pose estimation is necessary to enable robots to display products. PYNet is a high-accuracy pose estimation method for the poses of simple-shaped objects such as triangles, rectangles, and cylinders, which are common in retail stores. PYNet improves pose estimation accuracy by first estimating the object’s ground face. However, simple-shaped objects have symmetrical shapes, making it difficult to estimate poses that are inverted by 180°. To solve this problem, we focused on the upper part of the product, which often contains more information, such as logos. We developed a new method, PYNet-zmap, by enabling PYNet to recognize the height direction, defined as the direction from the bottom to the top of the product. Recognizing the height direction suppresses the 180° inversion in pose estimation and facilitates automatic product display. In pose estimation experiments using public 3D object data, PYNet-zmap achieved a correct rate of 79.2% within a 30° error margin, an improvement of 2.8 points compared with the conventional PYNet. We also implemented PYNet-zmap on a 6-axis robot arm and conducted product display experiments. As a result, 82.5% of the products were displayed correctly, an improvement of 8.9 points compared to using PYNet for pose estimation.