Robotic Grasping and Manipulation Competition: Competitor Feedback and Lessons Learned

The First Robot Grasping and Manipulation Competition, held during IROS 2016, allowed researchers focused on the application of robot systems to compare the performance of hand designs as well as autonomous grasping and manipulation solutions across a common set of tasks. The competition was comprised of three tracks that included hand-in-hand grasping, fully autonomous grasping, and simulation. The hand-in-hand and fully autonomous tracks used 18 predefined manipulation tasks and 20 objects. Additionally, a bin picking operation was also performed within the hand-in-hand and fully autonomous tracks using a shopping basket and a subset of the objects. The simulation track included two parts. The first was a pick and place operation, where a simulated hand extracted as many objects as possible from a cluttered shelf and placed them randomly in a bin. The second part was a bin picking operation where a simulated robotic hand lifted as many balls as possible from a bin and deposited them into a second bin. This paper presents competitor feedback as well as an analysis of lessons learned towards improvements and advancements for the next competition at IROS 2017.