Methods and apparatuses for dropped object detection

A mobile robotic device, comprising:

• at least one distance sensor arranged on a base of the mobile robot, wherein the at least one distance sensor is configured to collect a distance-based point cloud including a plurality of points in three dimensions;
• at least one storage device configured to store information about at least one known surface in an environment of the robotic device;
• and
• at least one computing device configured to:
• filter the distance-based point cloud to remove points from the plurality of points based on the information about the at least one known surface to produce a filtered distance-based point cloud;
• cluster points in the filtered distance-based point cloud to produce a set of point clusters;
• and
• detect one or more objects based, at least in part, on the set of point clusters.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium encoded with a plurality of instructions that, when executed by at least one computing device, perform a method comprising:

• receiving a distance-based point cloud including a plurality of points in three dimensions;
• filtering the distance-based point cloud to remove points from the plurality of points based on at least one known surface in an environment of the robotic device to produce a filtered distance-based point cloud;
• clustering points in the filtered distance-based point cloud to produce a set of point clusters;
• and
• detecting one or more objects based, at least in part, on the set of point clusters.