This work is a collaboration between Paul Fitzpatrick and Giorgio Metta.

Sometimes the boundary between objects and their surroundings is not clear. One of the things our robot Cog can do is learn about objects by poking them and seeing what happens. If can identify the boundaries of objects by pushing them a little and see what parts move together (the object) and what stays still (the background). This is called active segmentation. Once Cog can reliably segment objects, then it can learn about their appearance and how they move.

Active segmentation in action. Cog resolves visual ambiguity by poking around and seeing what happens.

Video:  Active segmentation

Cog taps a toy with his flipper and uses the motion to segment the object from the background.    Quicktime -- (2.0 MB)    Length: approximately 20 seconds