This paper proposes a new tactile sensor capable of automatically adjusting the sensitivity of each sensor unit, depending upon the contact information. Suppose a strain gauge based tactile sensor composed of multiple sub-sensor units and a single AD-DA port. For such a sensor system, we introduce two key components; the Analyzer, how to determine the contact force quickly from each sub-sensor ...

Sensor feedback and sensor fusion are indispensable for working in the real world. In this paper a robot hand grasping method is proposed. This method uses visual and tactile sensor information. First, grasping evaluation functions is proposed, which is derived from the relationships between a hand and an object. Then a control method is proposed which uses visual and tactile feedback. In this ...

In this paper, a hemisphere-shaped soft fingertip for soft fingers is developed and its modeling based on force distribution is presented. We first analyze the geometrical relation of the soft fingertip when it is deformed. Secondly, the force distribution of the soft fingertip is investigated by using a compressional strain mechanism. And then, we propose a nonlinear model of the soft fingerti...

A stretchable tactile sensor skin has been demonstrated on the dorsal side of a robotic hand for the first time. The sensors can detect normal pressures on the same scale as human skin but also in excess of 250 kPa and withstand strains in excess of 15%. Using tactile information from the sensors mounted on a glove worn by a humanoid robot’s hand, obstacle detection and surface reconstruction t...

Robot tactile sensation can enhance human-robot communication in terms of safety, reliability and accuracy. The final goal of our project is to widely cover a robot body with a large number of tactile sensors, which has significant advantages such as accurate object recognition, high sensitivity and high redundancy. In this study, we developed a multi-sensor system with dedicated Complementary ...

Humans obtain complex information using different tactile receptors in the skin of the finger. Artificial tactile sensors capable of detecting complex information can be realized by imitating certain characteristics of the human finger, such as the geometry of the finger and the location of the tactile receptors. In the present paper, we analyzed the strain distribution that occurs inside an el...

This paper presents initial results in integrating touch with vision for delicate manipulation tasks. A generalizable framework of behavioral primitives for tactile and visual feedback control is proposed. Since vision provides position and shape information at a distance, while tactile provides small-scale geometric and force information, we focus on the complimentary roles of vision and touch...

We propose a new sensor element for a tactile sensor skin which covers a large area such as a whole surface of a robot. The element acquires not only contact force but also contact area by using the nonlinear elasticity of skin materials. This paper provides the structure and theory of our tactile sensor element, and presents experimental results.

In this work we tackle the problem of estimating the local compliance of tactile arrays exploiting global measurements from a single force and torque sensor. Experiments have been conducted on the feet of the iCub robot [1], sensorized with a single force/torque sensor, an inertial unit and a tactile array of 250 tactile elements (taxels) on the foot sole. Results show that a simple calibration...