# Grasping Partially Occluded Objects Using Autoencoder-Based Point Cloud Inpainting

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.12549 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12549/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 12 of its 30 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Mar 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [EfficientNet: Rethinking Model Scaling for Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.11946/) (2019)
- [PointNet: Deep Learning on Point Sets for 3D Classification and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00593/) (2016)
- [Perceptual Losses for Real-Time Style Transfer and Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.08155/) (2016)
- [Free-Form Image Inpainting with Gated Convolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.03589/) (2018)
- [Image Inpainting for Irregular Holes Using Partial Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.07723/) (2018)
- [Dex-Net 2.0: Deep Learning to Plan Robust Grasps with Synthetic Point Clouds and Analytic Grasp Metrics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.09312/) (2017)
- [Data-Driven Grasp Synthesis - A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1309.2660/) (2013)
- [Generative PointNet: Deep Energy-Based Learning on Unordered Point Sets for 3D Generation, Reconstruction and Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.01301/) (2020)
- [Dense 3D Point Cloud Reconstruction Using a Deep Pyramid Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.08906/) (2019)
- [Structural inpainting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.10348/) (2018)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Flexible industrial production systems will play a central role in the future of manufacturing due to higher product individualization and customization. A key component in such systems is the robotic grasping of known or unknown objects in random positions. Real-world applications often come with challenges that might not be considered in grasping solutions tested in simulation or lab settings. Partial occlusion of the target object is the most prominent. Examples of occlusion can be supporting structures in the camera's field of view, sensor imprecision, or parts occluding each other due to the production process. In all these cases, the resulting lack of information leads to shortcomings in calculating grasping points. In this paper, we present an algorithm to reconstruct the missing information. Our inpainting solution facilitates the real-world utilization of robust object matching approaches for grasping point calculation. We demonstrate the benefit of our solution by enabling an existing grasping system embedded in a real-world industrial application to handle occlusions in the input. With our solution, we drastically decrease the number of objects discarded by the process.