Enhancing Intelligent Robot Perception with a Zero-Shot Detection Framework for Corner Casting

Abstract

This study presents a zero-shot object detection framework for corner casting detection in shipping container operations, leveraging edge computing for intelligent robotic perception and control. The proposed system integrates Grounding DINO on a Raspberry Pi, utilizing Referring Expression Comprehension (REC) and Additional Feature Keywords (AFKs) to enable precise corner casting localization without model retraining. This approach reduces computational overhead while ensuring real-time deployment suitability for robotics applications. A comparative evaluation against three SSD-based models—SSD320 MobileNet-V2 FPNLite, MobileNet-V2, and EfficientDet-Lite0—reveals that Grounding DINO achieves a 7.14% higher detection score. Furthermore, a statistical effect size analysis using Cohen’s d (d = 2.2) confirms a significant performance advantage, reinforcing Grounding DINO’s efficacy in zero-shot scenarios. These findings underscore the potential of LLM-driven object detection in resource-constrained environments, offering a scalable and adaptable solution for intelligent perception and control in robotics.