Perception

Interactive Perception

Interactive perception is the paradigm in which a robot acts on the world specifically to improve its perception, such as pushing objects apart to segment clutter, lifting an item to gauge its weight, or moving the camera to resolve an occlusion. By exploiting the coupling between action and sensing, it recovers properties like mass, articulation, and rigidity that passive observation cannot reveal.

Why it matters for physical AI

Embodiment is an informational advantage: robots that probe and nudge the world resolve ambiguities that stall vision-only systems, which is essential in cluttered, partially observable real environments.