Evaluation of Circle Diameter by Distributed Tactile Information in Active Tracing

Hiroyuki Nakamoto,Fumio Kojima,Futoshi Kobayashi

doi:10.1155/2013/658749

Abstract

Active touch with voluntary movement on the surface of an object is important for human to obtain the local and detailed features on it. In addition, the active touch is considered to enhance the human spatial resolution. In order to improve dexterity performance of multifinger robotic hands, it is necessary to study an active touch method for robotic hands. In this paper, first, we define four requirements of a tactile sensor for active touch and design a distributed tactile sensor model, which can measure a distribution of compressive deformation. Second, we suggest a measurement process with the sensor model, a synthesis method of distributed deformations. In the experiments, a five-finger robotic hand with tactile sensors traces on the surface of cylindrical objects and evaluates the diameters. We confirm that the hand can obtain more information of the diameters by tracing the finger.

Highlights

Human voluntarily touches an object and perceives its characteristic features
A development of tactile sensor and a measurement method based on exploratory moving is necessary for developing dexterous robotic hand
In order to obtain details of local area of an object, we decided the conditions of distributed tactile sensors and verified the effectiveness of tracing the finger with the tactile sensor

Summary

Introduction

Human voluntarily touches an object and perceives its characteristic features. The procedure is called as active touch. Wang and Li have proposed a feedback to control a robotic arm interacting with soft human skin [9] and have applied an end-effector with a tactile sensor to a massaging work [10]. These studies indicate the importance and effectiveness of robotic hands with tactile sensor. Active touch is a method to obtain detailed and local information of objects. Robotic hands are not still enough, and requirements of the tactile sensor which can obtain detailed information by active touch should be discussed.

Active Touch by Distributed Tactile Sensor

Tactile Sensor for Robotic Hand

Experiments with Active Tracing

Conclusion