Use of Computer Vision to Detect Tangles in Tangled Objects

Untangling of structures like ropes and wires by autonomous robots can be useful in areas such as personal robotics, industries and electrical wiring & repairing by robots. This problem can be tackled by using computer vision system in robot. This paper proposes a computer vision based method for analyzing visual data acquired from camera for perceiving the overlap of wires, ropes, hoses i.e. detecting tangles. Information obtained after processing image according to the proposed method comprises of position of tangles in tangled object and which wire passes over which wire. This information can then be used to guide robot to untangle wire/s. Given an image, preprocessing is done to remove noise. Then edges of wire are detected. After that, the image is divided into smaller blocks and each block is checked for wire overlap/s and finding other relevant information. TANGLED-100 dataset was introduced, which consists of images of tangled linear deformable objects. Method discussed in here was tested on the TANGLED-100 dataset. Accuracy achieved during experiments was found to be 74.9%. Robotic simulations were carried out to demonstrate the use of the proposed method in applications of robot. Proposed method is a general method that can be used by robots working in different situations.