Cross-Modal Visuo-Tactile Object Perception

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Dutta, Anirvan, Tasciotti, Simone, Cusseddu, Claudia, Li, Ang, Poirazi, Panayiota, Gjorgjieva, Julijana, Burdet, Etienne, van der Smagt, Patrick, Kaboli, Mohsen
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Dutta, Anirvan
Tasciotti, Simone
Cusseddu, Claudia
Li, Ang
Poirazi, Panayiota
Gjorgjieva, Julijana
Burdet, Etienne
van der Smagt, Patrick
Kaboli, Mohsen
author_facet Dutta, Anirvan
Tasciotti, Simone
Cusseddu, Claudia
Li, Ang
Poirazi, Panayiota
Gjorgjieva, Julijana
Burdet, Etienne
van der Smagt, Patrick
Kaboli, Mohsen
contents Estimating physical properties is critical for safe and efficient autonomous robotic manipulation, particularly during contact-rich interactions. In such settings, vision and tactile sensing provide complementary information about object geometry, pose, inertia, stiffness, and contact dynamics, such as stick-slip behavior. However, these properties are only indirectly observable and cannot always be modeled precisely (e.g., deformation in non-rigid objects coupled with nonlinear contact friction), making the estimation problem inherently complex and requiring sustained exploitation of visuo-tactile sensory information during action. Existing visuo-tactile perception frameworks have primarily emphasized forceful sensor fusion or static cross-modal alignment, with limited consideration of how uncertainty and beliefs about object properties evolve over time. Inspired by human multi-sensory perception and active inference, we propose the Cross-Modal Latent Filter (CMLF) to learn a structured, causal latent state-space of physical object properties. CMLF supports bidirectional transfer of cross-modal priors between vision and touch and integrates sensory evidence through a Bayesian inference process that evolves over time. Real-world robotic experiments demonstrate that CMLF improves the efficiency and robustness of latent physical properties estimation under uncertainty compared to baseline approaches. Beyond performance gains, the model exhibits perceptual coupling phenomena analogous to those observed in humans, including susceptibility to cross-modal illusions and similar trajectories in learning cross-sensory associations. Together, these results constitutes a significant step toward generalizable, robust and physically consistent cross-modal integration for robotic multi-sensory perception.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_02108
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Cross-Modal Visuo-Tactile Object Perception
Dutta, Anirvan
Tasciotti, Simone
Cusseddu, Claudia
Li, Ang
Poirazi, Panayiota
Gjorgjieva, Julijana
Burdet, Etienne
van der Smagt, Patrick
Kaboli, Mohsen
Robotics
Machine Learning
Estimating physical properties is critical for safe and efficient autonomous robotic manipulation, particularly during contact-rich interactions. In such settings, vision and tactile sensing provide complementary information about object geometry, pose, inertia, stiffness, and contact dynamics, such as stick-slip behavior. However, these properties are only indirectly observable and cannot always be modeled precisely (e.g., deformation in non-rigid objects coupled with nonlinear contact friction), making the estimation problem inherently complex and requiring sustained exploitation of visuo-tactile sensory information during action. Existing visuo-tactile perception frameworks have primarily emphasized forceful sensor fusion or static cross-modal alignment, with limited consideration of how uncertainty and beliefs about object properties evolve over time. Inspired by human multi-sensory perception and active inference, we propose the Cross-Modal Latent Filter (CMLF) to learn a structured, causal latent state-space of physical object properties. CMLF supports bidirectional transfer of cross-modal priors between vision and touch and integrates sensory evidence through a Bayesian inference process that evolves over time. Real-world robotic experiments demonstrate that CMLF improves the efficiency and robustness of latent physical properties estimation under uncertainty compared to baseline approaches. Beyond performance gains, the model exhibits perceptual coupling phenomena analogous to those observed in humans, including susceptibility to cross-modal illusions and similar trajectories in learning cross-sensory associations. Together, these results constitutes a significant step toward generalizable, robust and physically consistent cross-modal integration for robotic multi-sensory perception.
title Cross-Modal Visuo-Tactile Object Perception
topic Robotics
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.02108