Perception
Normal Estimation
Normal estimation is the computation of surface normal vectors from 3D data such as point clouds or depth images, typically by fitting a local plane to each point's neighborhood via principal component analysis. Estimated normals describe local surface orientation and are sensitive to sensor noise and neighborhood size. Libraries such as PCL and Open3D provide standard implementations.
Why it matters for physical AI
Grasp planners align gripper approach directions with surface normals, and normals feed registration, segmentation, and contact reasoning throughout manipulation perception pipelines.
Build physical AI
Put these concepts to work on real hardware
Axol is a dual-arm robot built for physical AI — teleoperate it, collect demonstrations, and deploy learned policies out of the box.