KARL: Kalman-Filter Assisted Reinforcement Learner for Dynamic Object Tracking and Grasping

Abstract: We present Kalman-filter Assisted Reinforcement Learner (KARL) for dynamic object tracking and grasping over eye-on-hand (EoH) systems, significantly expanding such systems capabilities in challenging, realistic environments. In comparison to the previous state-of-the-art, KARL (1) incorporates a novel six-stage RL curriculum that doubles the system's motion range, thereby greatly enhancing the system's grasping performance, (2) integrates a robust Kalman filter layer between the perception and reinforcement learning (RL) control modules, enabling the system to maintain an uncertain but continuous 6D pose estimate even when the target object temporarily exits the camera's field-of-view or undergoes rapid, unpredictable motion, and (3) introduces mechanisms to allow retries to gracefully recover from unavoidable policy execution failures. Extensive evaluations conducted in both simulation and real-world experiments qualitatively and quantitatively corroborate KARL's advantage over earlier systems, achieving higher grasp success rates and faster robot execution speed. Source code and supplementary materials for KARL will be made available at: https://github.com/arc-l/karl.