We demonstrate that challenging shortest path problems can be solved via direct spline regression from a neural network, trained in an unsupervised manner (i.e. without requiring ground truth optimal paths for training). To achieve this, we derive a geometry-dependent optimal cost function whose minima guarantees collision-free solutions. Our method beats state-of-the-art supervised learning baselines for shortest path planning, with a much more scalable training pipeline, and a significant speedup in inference time.

Robots and other smart devices need efficient object-based scene representations from their on-board vision systems to reason about contact, physics and occlusion. Recognized precise object models will play an important role alongside non-parametric reconstructions of unrecognized structures. We present a system which can estimate the accurate poses of multiple known objects in contact and occlusion from real-time, embodied multi-view vision. Our approach makes 3D object pose proposals from single RGB-D views, accumulates pose estimates and non-parametric occupancy information from multiple views as the camera moves, and performs joint optimization to estimate consistent, non-intersecting poses for multiple objects in contact. We verify the accuracy and robustness of our approach experimentally on 2 object datasets: YCB-Video, and our own challenging Cluttered YCB-Video. We demonstrate a real-time robotics application where a robot arm precisely and orderly disassembles complicated piles of objects, using only on-board RGB-D vision.