CapriDB - Capture, Print, Innovate: A Low-Cost Pipeline and Database for Reproducible Manipulation Research

TL;DR

CapriDB introduces an accessible, low-cost pipeline combining monocular imaging, 3D printing, and advanced tracking to create reproducible, detailed object models for robotic manipulation research, democratizing data collection.

Contribution

It presents a novel, inexpensive method for generating detailed 3D object models and a database that supports reproducible manipulation experiments without specialized equipment.

Findings

High-fidelity 3D models comparable to original objects.

Reproducible manipulation conditions enabled by 3D printed object variants.

An extensible database with 40 textured, printable models.

Abstract

We present a novel approach and database which combines the inexpensive generation of 3D object models via monocular or RGB-D camera images with 3D printing and a state of the art object tracking algorithm. Unlike recent efforts towards the creation of 3D object databases for robotics, our approach does not require expensive and controlled 3D scanning setups and enables anyone with a camera to scan, print and track complex objects for manipulation research. The proposed approach results in highly detailed mesh models whose 3D printed replicas are at times difficult to distinguish from the original. A key motivation for utilizing 3D printed objects is the ability to precisely control and vary object properties such as the mass distribution and size in the 3D printing process to obtain reproducible conditions for robotic manipulation research. We present CapriDB - an extensible database resulting from this approach containing initially 40 textured and 3D printable mesh models together with tracking features to facilitate the adoption of the proposed approach.