Robotic Tactile Perception of Object Properties: A Review

Touch sensing can help robots understand their surrounding environment, and in particular the objects they interact with. To this end, roboticists have, in the last few decades, developed several tactile sensing solutions, extensively reported in the literature. Research into interpreting the conveyed tactile information has also started to attract increasing attention in recent years. However, a comprehensive study on this topic is yet to be reported. In an effort to collect and summarize the major scientific achievements in the area, this survey extensively reviews current trends in robot tactile perception of object properties. Available tactile sensing technologies are briefly presented before an extensive review on tactile recognition of object properties. The object properties that are targeted by this review are shape, surface material and object pose. The role of touch sensing in combination with other sensing sources is also discussed. In this review, open issues are identified and future directions for applying tactile sensing in different tasks are suggested.