Learning Dense Visual Descriptors using Image Augmentations for Robot Manipulation Tasks

Abstract: We propose a self-supervised training approach for learning view-invariant dense visual descriptors using image augmentations. Unlike existing works, which often require complex datasets, such as registered RGBD sequences, we train on an unordered set of RGB images. This allows for learning from a single camera view, e.g., in an existing robotic cell with a fix-mounted camera. We create synthetic views and dense pixel correspondences using data augmentations. We find our descriptors are competitive to the existing methods, despite the simpler data recording and setup requirements. We show that training on synthetic correspondences provides descriptor consistency across a broad range of camera views. We compare against training with geometric correspondence from multiple views and provide ablation studies. We also show a robotic bin-picking experiment using descriptors learned from a fix-mounted camera for defining grasp preferences.