Tactile sensing is a essential for skilled manipulation and object perception, but existing devices are unable to capture mechanical signals in the full gamut of regimes that are important for human touch sensing, and are unable to emulate the sensing abilities of the human hand. Recent research reveals that human touch sensing relies on the transmission of mechanical waves throughout tissues of the hand. This provides the hand with remarkable abilities to remotely capture distributed vibration signatures of touch contact. Little engineering attention has been given to important sensory system. Here, we present a wearable device inspired by the anatomy and function of the hand and by human sensory abilities. The device is based on a 126 channel sensor array capable of capturing high resolution tactile signals during natural manual activities. It employs a network of miniature three-axis sensors mounted on a flexible circuit whose geometry and topology were designed match the anatomy of the hand, permitting data capture during natural interactions, while minimizing artifacts. Each sensor possesses a frequency bandwidth matching the human tactile frequency range. Data is acquired in real time via a custom FPGA and an I$^2$C network. We also present physiologically informed signal processing methods for reconstructing whole hand tactile signals using data from this system. We report experiments that demonstrate the ability of this system to accurately capture remotely produced whole hand tactile signals during manual interactions.
Nara Institute of Science and Technology（奈良先端科学技术大学院大学）
Tactile perception using vibration sensation helps robots recognize their environment's physical properties and perform complex tasks. A sliding motion is applied to target objects to generate tactile vibration data. However, situations exist where such a sliding motion is infeasible due to geometrical constraints in the environment or an object's fragility which cannot resist friction forces. This paper explores a novel approach to achieve vibration-based tactile perception without a sliding motion. To this end, our key idea is injecting a mechanical vibration into a soft tactile sensor syste…
TacPrint: A Wearable Fingertip Tactile Sensor for Human-to-Robot Contact Reproduction
Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院自动化研究所）；Imprintx Robotics（Imprintx机器人公司）；Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence（北京智源人工智能研究院）
Flexible electrical impedance tomography for tactile interfaces
The University of Edinburgh（爱丁堡大学）；Institute for Imaging, Data and Communications（成像、数据与通信研究所）；Institute for Integrated Micro and Nano Systems（集成微纳系统研究所）
This work details the design of a novel two finger robot gripper with multiple Gelsight based optical-tactile sensors covering the inner surface of the hand. The multiple Gelsight sensors can gather the surface topology of the object from multiple views simultaneously as well as can track the shear and tensile stress. In addition, other sensing modalities enable the hand to gather the thermal, acoustic and vibration information from the object being grasped. The force controlled gripper is fully actuated so that it can be used for various grasp configurations and can also be used for in-hand m…
A thin and soft optical tactile sensor for highly sensitive object perception
Graduate School of Natural Science and Technology, Kanazawa University（自然科学技术研究生院，金泽大学）；Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Institute of Science and Engineering, Kanazawa University（机械工程学部，科学工程研究所，金泽大学）；Hamamatsu Photonics K.K.（Hamamatsu光子株式会社）
Curvature-Aware Calibration of Tactile Sensors for Accurate Force Estimation on Non-Planar Surfaces
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering（电气与计算机工程学院）；Cornell University（康奈尔大学）；Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering（机械与航空航天工程学院）；Dept. of Mechanical Engineering（机械工程系）；Virginia Tech（弗吉尼亚理工大学）
Robot touch can benefit from how humans perceive tactile textural information, from the stimulation mode to which tactile channels respond, then the tactile cues and encoding. Using a soft biomimetic tactile sensor (the TacTip) based on the physiology of the dermal-epidermal boundary, we construct two biomimetic tactile channels based on slowly-adapting SA-I and rapidly-adapting RA-I afferents, and introduce an additional sub-modality for vibrotactile information with an embedded microphone interpreted as an artificial RA-II channel. These artificial tactile channels are stimulated dynamically…
A Biomimetic Fingerprint for Robotic Tactile Sensing
Faculty of Mechatronic \& Micro-Mechatronic Systems Hochschule Karlsruhe (HKA) Karlsruhe, Germany；Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz GmbH；L3S Research Center, Leibniz Universität Hannover Hannover, Germany
In this paper we present an early prototype of the Digger Finger that is designed to easily penetrate granular media and is equipped with the GelSight sensor. Identifying objects buried in granular media using tactile sensors is a challenging task. First, particle jamming in granular media prevents downward movement. Second, the granular media particles tend to get stuck between the sensing surface and the object of interest, distorting the actual shape of the object. To tackle these challenges we present a Digger Finger prototype. It is capable of fluidizing granular media during penetration …
FasTac: A Curved Multispectral Vision-Based Tactile Sensor for High-Speed High-Precision 3D Shape and Force Perception
State Key Laboratory of Intelligent Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology（华中科技大学机械科学与工程学院智能制造装备与技术国家重点实验室）；National Innovation Institute of Digital Design and Manufacturing（国家数字化设计与制造创新中心）
Adding internal audio sensing to internal vision enables human-like in-hand fabric recognition with soft robotic fingertips
Haptic Intelligence Department, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems（马克斯·普朗克智能系统研究所人机交互部门）；Department for Distributed Intelligence / Autonomous Learning, University of Tübingen（图宾根大学分布式智能/自主学习部门）
Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology（斯科尔科沃科学技术研究所）
To achieve a smooth and safe guiding of a drone formation by a human operator, we propose a novel interaction strategy for a human-swarm communication which combines impedance control and vibrotactile feedback. The presented approach takes into account the human hand velocity and changes the formation shape and dynamics accordingly using impedance interlinks simulated between quadrotors, which helps to achieve a natural swarm behavior. Several tactile patterns representing static and dynamic parameters of the swarm are proposed. The user feels the state of the swarm at the fingertips and recei…
Point-Wise Vibration Pattern Production via a Sparse Actuator Array for Surface Tactile Feedback
Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute（清华-伯克利深圳学院）；Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School（清华大学深圳国际研究生院）；Tsinghua University（清华大学）；RISC-V International Open Source Laboratory（RISC-V国际开源实验室）
University of ElectroCommunications, Tokyo（东京电机大学）
For the human operator, it is often easier and faster to catch a small size quadrotor right in the midair instead of landing it on a surface. However, interaction strategies for such cases have not yet been considered properly, especially when more than one drone has to be landed at the same time. In this paper, we propose a novel interaction strategy to land multiple robots on the human hands using vibrotactile feedback. We developed a wearable tactile display that is activated by the intensity of light emitted from an LED ring on the bottom of the quadcopter. We conducted experiments, where …
Robots are expected to grasp a wide range of objects varying in shape, weight or material type. Providing robots with tactile capabilities similar to humans is thus essential for applications involving human-to-robot or robot-to-robot interactions, particularly in those situations where a robot is expected to grasp and manipulate complex objects not previously encountered. A critical aspect for successful object grasp and manipulation is the use of high-quality fingertips equipped with multiple high-performance sensors, distributed appropriately across a specific contact surface. In this paper…
At First Contact: Stiffness Estimation Using Vibrational Information for Prosthetic Grasp Modulation
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University（生物医学工程系，约翰·霍普金斯大学）；Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Johns Hopkins University（电气与计算机工程系，约翰·霍普金斯大学）
AetheRock: An Arm-Worn Robot Teaching System for Force-Guided Vision-Tactile Learning
Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学）；Ant Group（蚂蚁集团）；Shanghai Innovation Institute（上海创新研究院）；Beijing Institute for General Artificial Intelligence (BIGAI)（北京通用人工智能研究院）
Display of illusory vibration locations between physical vibrotactile motors (tactors) placed on the skin has the potential to reduce the number of tactors in distributed tactile displays. This paper presents a between-tactor display method that uses dynamic tactile stimuli to generate illusory vibration locations. A belt with only 6 vibration motors displays 24 targets consisting of on-tactor and between-tactor locations. On-tactor locations are represented by simply vibrating the relevant single tactor. Between-tactor locations are displayed by adjusting the relative vibration amplitudes of …
Supernumerary Robotic Limbs (SRLs) exhibit inherently compliant behavior due to the elasticity present at the intersection of human tissue and the robot. This compliance, can prominently influence the operation of some SRLs, depending on the application. In order to control the residual vibrations of SRLs, we have used an input-shaping method which is a computationally inexpensive approach. The effectiveness of this method in controlling the residual vibrations of a SRL has been proven using robustness analysis. User studies show that reducing the vibrations using input shaping directly increa…
Humans display the remarkable ability to sense the world through tools and other held objects. For example, we are able to pinpoint impact locations on a held rod and tell apart different textures using a rigid probe. In this work, we consider how we can enable robots to have a similar capacity, i.e., to embody tools and extend perception using standard grasped objects. We propose that vibro-tactile sensing using dynamic tactile sensors on the robot fingers, along with machine learning models, enables robots to decipher contact information that is transmitted as vibrations along rigid objects.…
Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology（斯科尔科沃科学技术研究院）
We report on the teleoperation system DronePick which provides remote object picking and delivery by a human-controlled quadcopter. The main novelty of the proposed system is that the human user continuously gets the visual and haptic feedback for accurate teleoperation. DronePick consists of a quadcopter equipped with a magnetic grabber, a tactile glove with finger motion tracking sensor, hand tracking system, and the Virtual Reality (VR) application. The human operator teleoperates the quadcopter by changing the position of the hand. The proposed vibrotactile patterns representing the locati…
Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech)（斯科尔科沃科学技术研究院（Skoltech））
TouchVR is a novel wearable haptic interface which can deliver multimodal tactile stimuli on the palm by DeltaTouch haptic display and vibrotactile feedback on the fingertips by vibration motors for the Virtual Reality (VR) user. DeltaTouch display is capable of generating 3D force vector at the contact point and presenting multimodal tactile sensation of weight, slippage, encounter, softness, and texture. The VR system consists of HTC Vive Pro base stations and head-mounted display (HMD), and Leap Motion controller for tracking the user's hands motion in VR. The MatrixTouch, BallFeel, and Rob…
We propose a novel system SwarmCloak for landing of a fleet of four flying robots on the human arms using light-sensitive landing pads with vibrotactile feedback. We developed two types of wearable tactile displays with vibromotors which are activated by the light emitted from the LED array at the bottom of quadcopters. In a user study, participants were asked to adjust the position of the arms to land up to two drones, having only visual feedback, only tactile feedback or visual-tactile feedback. The experiment revealed that when the number of drones increases, tactile feedback plays a more i…
Tactile afferents such as (RA), and Pacinian (PC) afferents that respond to external stimuli enable complicated actions such as grasping, stroking and identifying an object. To understand the tactile sensation induced by these actions deeply, the activities of the tactile afferents need to be revealed. For this purpose, we develop a computational model for each tactile afferent for vibration stimuli, combining finite element analysis finite element method (FEM) analysis and a leaky integrate-and-fire model that represents the neural characteristics. This computational model can easily estimate…
FreeTacMan: Robot-free Visuo-Tactile Data Collection System for Contact-rich Manipulation
Shanghai Innovation Institute（上海创新研究院）；The University of Hong Kong（香港大学）；Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学）；Fudan University（复旦大学）；Shanghai University（上海大学）
The sense of touch plays a key role in enabling humans to understand and interact with surrounding environments. For robots, tactile sensing is also irreplaceable. While interacting with objects, tactile sensing provides useful information for the robot to understand the object, such as distributed pressure, temperature, vibrations and texture. During robot grasping, vision is often occluded by its end-effectors, whereas tactile sensing can measure areas that are not accessible by vision. In the past decades, a number of tactile sensors have been developed for robots and used for different rob…
TouchAnything: A Dataset and Framework for Bimanual Tactile Estimation from Egocentric Video
Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen（哈尔滨工业大学深圳研究院）；Meituan Academy of Robotics（美团机器人研究院）；Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University（清华大学深圳国际研究生院）
A wearable haptic device for edge and surface simulation
Institute of Mechanical Intelligence, School of Advanced Studies Sant'Anna (SSSA)（圣安娜高等研究学院机械智能研究所）；CAS Key Laboratory of Mechanical Behavior and Design of Materials, Institute of Humanoid Robots, School of Engineering Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学院材料力学行为和设计重点实验室，中国科学技术大学工程科学学院仿生机器人研究所）
Feasibility of Embedded Photoplethysmography Sensing in Short-Duration Tactile Interactions With Pocket-Sized Robots Using IMU- and Confidence-Based Filtering
A Wearable Robotic Hand for Hand-over-Hand Imitation Learning
Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute, Tsinghua University（清华大学清华-伯克利深圳学院）；Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences, Tsinghua University（清华大学交叉信息研究院）；Shanghai AI Lab（上海人工智能实验室）；Shanghai Qi Zhi Institute（上海期智研究院）
