The Performance of a Deformable-Membrane Tactile Sensor: Basic Results on Geometrically-Defined Tasks

The limitations of rigid ngertips in the precise and algorithmic study of manipulation have been discussed in many works, some dating back more than a decade. Despite that fact, much of the work in dexterous manipulation has continued to use the \point-contact" model for nger-object interactions. In fact, most of the existing tactile sensing technologies are not adaptable to deformable ngertips. In this work we report on experimental results obtained with a deformable tactile sensor whose properties are well-suited to manipulation. The results presented here show that the sensor described provides a rich set of tactile data.