3D object and object class recognition gained momentum with the arrival of low-cost RGB-D sensors and enables robotics tasks not feasible years ago. Scaling object class recognition to hundreds of classes still requires extensive time and many objects for learning. To overcome the training issue, we introduce a methodology for learning 3D descriptors from synthetic CAD-models and classification of never-before-seen objects at the first glance, where classification rates and speed are suited for robotics tasks. We provide this in 3DNet (3d-net.org), a free resource for object class recognition and 6DOF pose estimation from point cloud data. 3DNet provides a large-scale hierarchical CAD-model databases with increasing numbers of classes and difficulty with 10, 50, 100 and 200 object classes together with evaluation datasets that contain thousands of scenes captured with a RGB-D sensor. 3DNet further provides an open-source framework based on the Point Cloud Library (PCL) for testing new descriptors and benchmarking of state-of-the-art descriptors together with pose estimation procedures to enable robotics tasks such as search and grasping.

Object recognition and especially object class recognition is and will be a key capability in home robotics when robots have to tackle manipulation tasks and grasp new objects or just have to search for objects. The goal is to have a robot classify 'never before seen objects' at first occurrence in a single view in a fast and robust manner. The classification task can be seen as a matching problem, finding the most appropriate 3D model and view with respect to a given depth image. We introduce a single-view shape model based classification approach using RGB-D sensors and a novel matching procedure for depth image to 3D model matching leading inherently to object classification. Utilizing the inter-view similarity of the 3D models for enhanced matching, the average precision of our descriptors is increased of up to 15% resulting in high classification accuracy. The presented adaptation of 3D shape descriptors to 2.5D data enables us to calculate the features in real time, directly from the 3D points of the sensor, without any calculation of normals or generating a mesh from it which is typical of state-of-art methods. Furthermore, we introduce a semi-automatic, user-centric approach to utilize the Internet for acquiring the required training data in the form of 3D models which significantly reduces the time for teaching new categories.

Nowadays, robust and light-weight parts used in the automobile and aeronautics industry are made of carbon fibres. To increase the mechanical toughness of the parts the carbon fibres are stitched in the preforming process using a sewing robot. However, current systems miss high flexibility and rely on manual programming of each part. The main target of this work is to develop an automatic system that autonomously sets the structure strengthening seams. Therefore, a rapid and flexible following of the carbon textile edges is required. Due to the black and reflective carbon fibres a laser-stripe sensor is necessary and the processing of the range data is a challenging task. The paper proposes a real time approach where different edge detection methodologies are combined in a voting scheme to increase the edge tracking robustness. The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of a fully automated, sensor-guided robotic sewing process. The seam can be located to within 0.65mm at a detection rate of 99.3% for individual scans.