Exploratory Tactile Servoing With Active Touch

Nathan F Lepora,Luke Cramphorn,Kirsty Aquilina

doi:10.1109/lra.2017.2662071

Nathan F Lepora, Luke Cramphorn + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1109/lra.2017.2662071

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Abstract

A key unsolved problem in tactile robotics is how to combine tactile perception and control to interact robustly and intelligently with the surroundings. Here, we focus on a prototypical task of tactile exploration over surface features such as edges or ridges, which is a principal exploratory procedure of humans to recognize object shape. Our methods were adapted from an approach for biomimetic active touch that perceives stimulus location and identity while controlling location to aid perception. With minor modification to the control policy, to rotate the sensor to maintain a relative orientation and move tangentially (tactile servoing), the method applies also to tactile exploration. Robust exploratory tactile servoing is then attained over various two-dimensional objects, ranging from the edge of a circular disk, a volute laminar, and circular or spiral ridges. Conceptually, the approach brings together active perception and haptic exploration as instantiations of a common active touch algorithm, and has potential to generalize to more complex tasks requiring the flexibility and robustness of human touch.

Highlights

T ACTILE sensing is widely recognized as necessary for future robots to physically interact with their surroundings in a controlled and robust way, enabling progress in applications such as autonomous manufacturing and personal assisted living
A principal issue for robot touch is that tactile sensation depends upon how a tactile sensor contacts a stimulus
Recent work on biomimetic active touch with fingertips and whiskers [8] spans robotics and neuroscience by combining an evidence accumulation model of perceptual decision making with a control policy for overt focal attention to regulate how the tactile sensor contacts a stimulus

Summary

Introduction

T ACTILE sensing is widely recognized as necessary for future robots to physically interact with their surroundings in a controlled and robust way, enabling progress in applications such as autonomous manufacturing and personal assisted living. The coupling between motion and sensing must be a principal aspect of artifical tactile perception [6], [7], as supported by numerous human and animal studies on active touch. Recent work on biomimetic active touch with fingertips and whiskers [8] spans robotics and neuroscience by combining an evidence accumulation model of perceptual decision making with a control policy for overt focal attention to regulate how the tactile sensor contacts a stimulus. Active touch combines number of angle classes), applies to a wider range of objects (including both edges and ridges), links to recent progress on biomimetic active touch [8] and brings in aspects of control that hold promise to extend to more complex tasks. Image processing techniques have been integrated into a control framework for tactile servoing to follow extended features such as planar wires [4]

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