This work contributes an event-driven visual-tactile perception system, comprising a novel biologically-inspired tactile sensor and multi-modal spike-based learning. Our neuromorphic fingertip tactile sensor, NeuTouch, scales well with the number of taxels thanks to its event-based nature. Likewise, our Visual-Tactile Spiking Neural Network (VT-SNN) enables fast perception when coupled with event sensors. We evaluate our visual-tactile system (using the NeuTouch and Prophesee event camera) on two robot tasks: container classification and rotational slip detection. On both tasks, we observe good accuracies relative to standard deep learning methods. We have made our visual-tactile datasets freely-available to encourage research on multi-modal event-driven robot perception, which we believe is a promising approach towards intelligent power-efficient robot systems.
Finger-tip tactile sensors are increasingly used for robotic sensing to establish stable grasps and to infer object properties. Promising performance has been shown in a number of works for inferring adjectives that describe the object, but there remains a question about how each taxel contributes to the performance. This paper explores this question with empirical experiments, leading insights for future finger-tip tactile sensor usage and design.
TacFinRay: Soft Tactile Fin-Ray Finger with Indirect Tactile Sensing for Robust Grasping
Graduate School of Data Science at Kyungpook National University（Kyungpook National University 数据科学研究生院）；University of Bristol（布里斯托大学）；Bristol Robotics Laboratory（布里斯托机器人实验室）
University of Bristol（布里斯托大学）；Bristol Robotics Laboratory（布里斯托机器人实验室）
Reproducing the capabilities of the human sense of touch in machines is an important step in enabling robot manipulation to have the ease of human dexterity. A combination of robotic technologies will be needed, including soft robotics, biomimetics and the high-resolution sensing offered by optical tactile sensors. This combination is considered here as a SoftBOT (Soft Biomimetic Optical Tactile) sensor. This article reviews the BRL TacTip as a prototypical example of such a sensor. Topics include the relation between artificial skin morphology and the transduction principles of human touch, t…
University of Bristol（布里斯托大学）；Bristol Robotics Laboratory（布里斯托机器人实验室）
Bringing tactile sensation to robotic hands will allow for more effective grasping, along with the wide range of benefits of human-like touch. Here we present a 3D-printed, three-fingered tactile robot hand comprising an OpenHand Model O customized to house a TacTip soft biomimetic tactile sensor in the distal phalanx of each finger. We expect that combining the grasping capabilities of this underactuated hand with sophisticated tactile sensing will result in an effective platform for robot hand research -- the Tactile Model O (T-MO). The design uses three JeVois machine vision systems, each c…
To adapt to constantly changing environments and be safe for human interaction, robots should have compliant and soft characteristics as well as the ability to sense the world around them. Even so, the incorporation of tactile sensing into a soft compliant robot, like the Fin Ray finger, is difficult due to its deformable structure. Not only does the frame need to be modified to allow room for a vision sensor, which enables intricate tactile sensing, the robot must also retain its original mechanically compliant properties. However, adding high-resolution tactile sensors to soft fingers is dif…
SimTac: A Physics-Based Simulator for Vision-Based Tactile Sensing with Biomorphic Structures
Department of Engineering, King’s College London（工程系，伦敦国王学院）；School of Aerospace Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology（航空工程学院，北京理工大学）；Department of Computer Science, University College London（计算机科学系，伦敦大学学院）
Due to the complexity of modeling the elastic properties of materials, the use of machine learning algorithms is continuously increasing for tactile sensing applications. Recent advances in deep neural networks applied to computer vision make vision-based tactile sensors very appealing for their high-resolution and low cost. A soft optical tactile sensor that is scalable to large surfaces with arbitrary shape is discussed in this paper. A supervised learning algorithm trains a model that is able to reconstruct the normal force distribution on the sensor's surface, purely from the images record…
University of Bristol（布里斯托大学）；Ultraleap Ltd.（Ultraleap有限公司）
Mid-air haptics create a new mode of feedback to allow people to feel tactile sensations in the air. Ultrasonic arrays focus acoustic radiation pressure in space, to induce tactile sensation from the resulting skin deflection. In this work, we present a low-cost tactile robot to test mid-air haptics. By combining a desktop robot arm with a 3D-printed biomimetic tactile sensor, we developed a system that can sense, map, and visualize mid-air haptic sensations created by an ultrasonic transducer array. We evaluate our tactile robot by testing it on a variety of mid-air haptic stimuli, including …
Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST)（日本北陆先端科学技术大学院大学（JAIST））；Hanoi University of Industry（河内工业大学）；Japan Science and Technology Agency（日本科学技术振兴机构）
Robots have been brought to work close to humans in many scenarios. For coexistence and collaboration, robots should be safe and pleasant for humans to interact with. To this end, the robots could be both physically soft with multimodal sensing/perception, so that the robots could have better awareness of the surrounding environment, as well as to respond properly to humans' action/intention. This paper introduces a novel soft robotic link, named ProTac, that possesses multiple sensing modes: tactile and proximity sensing, based on computer vision and a functional material. These modalities co…
This paper addresses the localization of contacts of an unknown grasped rigid object with its environment, i.e., extrinsic to the robot. We explore the key role that distributed tactile sensing plays in localizing contacts external to the robot, in contrast to the role that aggregated force/torque measurements play in localizing contacts on the robot. When in contact with the environment, an object will move in accordance with the kinematic and possibly frictional constraints imposed by that contact. Small motions of the object, which are observable with tactile sensors, indirectly encode thos…
National University of Singapore（新加坡国立大学）；Guilin University of Electronic Technology（桂林电子科技大学）
The tactile sensing capabilities of human hands are essential in performing daily activities. Simultaneously perceiving normal and shear forces via the mechanoreceptors integrated into the hands enables humans to achieve daily tasks like grasping delicate objects. In this paper, we design and fabricate a novel biomimetic tactile sensor with skin-like heterogeneity that perceives normal and shear contact forces simultaneously. It mimics the multilayers of mechanoreceptors by combining an extrinsic layer (piezoresistive sensors) and an intrinsic layer (a Hall sensor) so that it can perform estim…
Department of Engineering, King’s College London（伦敦国王学院工程系）；School of Engineering Mathematics and Bristol Robotics Laboratory, University of Bristol（布里斯托大学工程数学学院和布里斯托机器人实验室）；Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign（伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校计算机科学系）；School of Engineering and Materials Science, Queen Mary University of London（伦敦Queen Mary大学工程与材料科学学院）；Institute for Cognitive Systems (ICS), Technische Universität München（慕尼黑技术大学认知系统研究所）；Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northeastern University（东北大学电气与计算机工程系）
University of Bristol（布里斯托大学）；Bristol Robotics Laboratory（布里斯托机器人实验室）
Deep learning combined with high-resolution tactile sensing could lead to highly capable dexterous robots. However, progress is slow because of the specialist equipment and expertise. The DIGIT tactile sensor offers low-cost entry to high-resolution touch using GelSight-type sensors. Here we customize the DIGIT to have a 3D-printed sensing surface based on the TacTip family of soft biomimetic optical tactile sensors. The DIGIT-TacTip (DigiTac) enables direct comparison between these distinct tactile sensor types. For this comparison, we introduce a tactile robot system comprising a desktop arm…
The ability to perform locomotion in various terrains is critical for legged robots. However, the robot has to have a better understanding of the surface it is walking on to perform robust locomotion on different terrains. Animals and humans are able to recognize the surface with the help of the tactile sensation on their feet. Although, the foot tactile sensation for legged robots has not been much explored. This paper presents research on a novel quadruped robot DogTouch with tactile sensing feet (TSF). TSF allows the recognition of different surface textures utilizing a tactile sensor and a…
M3D-skin: Multi-material 3D-printed Tactile Sensor with Hierarchical Infill Structures for Pressure Sensing
Department of Mechano-Informatics, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo（机械信息学系，信息科学和技术研究生院，东京大学）；AI Center, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo（人工智能中心，信息科学和技术研究生院，东京大学）
Learning-enhanced electronic skin for tactile sensing on deformable surface based on electrical impedance tomography
The University of Edinburgh（爱丁堡大学）；School of Engineering（工程学院）；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）
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…
University of Bristol（布里斯托大学）；Universit di Pisa（比萨大学）；Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia（意大利理工学院）
In this work, we report on the integrated sensorimotor control of the Pisa/IIT SoftHand, an anthropomorphic soft robot hand designed around the principle of adaptive synergies, with the BRL tactile fingertip (TacTip), a soft biomimetic optical tactile sensor based on the human sense of touch. Our focus is how a sense of touch can be used to control an anthropomorphic hand with one degree of actuation, based on an integration that respects the hand's mechanical functionality. We consider: (i) closed-loop tactile control to establish a light contact on an unknown held object, based on the struct…
University of Bristol（布里斯托大学）；University of Pisa（比萨大学）；Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia（意大利技术研究院）
This paper presents a control scheme for force sensitive, gentle grasping with a Pisa/IIT anthropomorphic SoftHand equipped with a miniaturised version of the TacTip optical tactile sensor on all five fingertips. The tactile sensors provide high-resolution information about a grasp and how the fingers interact with held objects. We first describe a series of hardware developments for performing asynchronous sensor data acquisition and processing, resulting in a fast control loop sufficient for real-time grasp control. We then develop a novel grasp controller that uses tactile feedback from all…
Humans perceive the world by interacting with objects, which often happens in a dynamic way. For example, a human would shake a bottle to guess its content. However, it remains a challenge for robots to understand many dynamic signals during contact well. This paper investigates dynamic tactile sensing by tackling the task of estimating liquid properties. We propose a new way of thinking about dynamic tactile sensing: by building a light-weighted data-driven model based on the simplified physical principle. The liquid in a bottle will oscillate after a perturbation. We propose a simple physics…
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
Technische Universität Berlin（柏林工业大学）；Science of Intelligence, Research Cluster of Excellence（卓越研究集群——智能科学）
We create a virtual 2D tactile array for soft pneumatic actuators using embedded audio components. We detect contact-specific changes in sound modulation to infer tactile information. We evaluate different sound representations and learning methods to detect even small contact variations. We demonstrate the acoustic tactile sensor array by the example of a PneuFlex actuator and use a Braille display to individually control the contact of 29x4 pins with the actuator's 90x10 mm palmar surface. Evaluating the spatial resolution, the acoustic sensor localizes edges in x- and y-direction with a roo…
In this paper, a novel tactile sensing mechanism for soft robotic fingers is proposed. Inspired by the proprioception mechanism found in mammals, the proposed approach infers tactile information from a strain sensor attached on the finger's tendon. We perform experiments to test the tactile sensing capabilities of the proposed structures, and our results indicate this method is capable of palpating texture and stiffness in both abduction and flexion contact. Under systematic cross validation, the proposed system achieved 100% and 99.7% accuracy in texture and stiffness discrimination respectiv…
Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology (BNRist)（北京信息科学与技术国家研究中心（BNRist））；State Key Lab on Intelligent Technology and Systems（智能技术与系统国家重点实验室）；Tsinghua University（清华大学）
Tactile sensing plays an important role in robotic perception and manipulation. To overcome the real-world limitations of data collection, simulating tactile response in virtual environment comes as a desire direction of robotic research. Most existing works model the tactile sensor as a rigid multi-body, which is incapable of reflecting the elastic property of the tactile sensor as well as characterizing the fine-grained physical interaction between two objects. In this paper, we propose Elastic Interaction of Particles (EIP), a novel framework for tactile emulation. At its core, EIP models t…
Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）；Tsinghua University（清华大学）
Soft robots offer significant advantages in adaptability, safety, and dexterity compared to conventional rigid-body robots. However, it is challenging to equip soft robots with accurate proprioception and tactile sensing due to their high flexibility and elasticity. In this work, we describe the development of a vision-based proprioceptive and tactile sensor for soft robots called GelFlex, which is inspired by previous GelSight sensing techniques. More specifically, we develop a novel exoskeleton-covered soft finger with embedded cameras and deep learning methods that enable high-resolution pr…
Tactile-JEPA: Topology-Aware Self-Supervised Representation Learning for Distributed Tactile Sensors
Sber AI；Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech)（斯科尔科沃科学技术学院）；HSE University（高等经济大学）；Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (AIRI)（人工智能研究院）
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…
