Abstract
Tactile sensing is an important perception mode for robots, but the existing tactile technologies have multiple limitations. What kind of tactile information robots need, and how to use the information, remain open questions. We believe a soft sensor surface and high-resolution sensing of geometry should be important components of a competent tactile sensor. In this paper, we discuss the development of a vision-based optical tactile sensor, GelSight. Unlike the traditional tactile sensors which measure contact force, GelSight basically measures geometry, with very high spatial resolution. The sensor has a contact surface of soft elastomer, and it directly measures its deformation, both vertical and lateral, which corresponds to the exact object shape and the tension on the contact surface. The contact force, and slip can be inferred from the sensor’s deformation as well. Particularly, we focus on the hardware and software that support GelSight’s application on robot hands. This paper reviews the development of GelSight, with the emphasis in the sensing principle and sensor design. We introduce the design of the sensor’s optical system, the algorithm for shape, force and slip measurement, and the hardware designs and fabrication of different sensor versions. We also show the experimental evaluation on the GelSight’s performance on geometry and force measurement. With the high-resolution measurement of shape and contact force, the sensor has successfully assisted multiple robotic tasks, including material perception or recognition and in-hand localization for robot manipulation.
Highlights
IntroductionResearchers have developed many different tactile sensors for robots [1,2,3,4], and the core part of those tactile sensors is to detect the contact and contact force, or force distribution over the fingertip area
Tactile sensing is an important mode for both human and robots to perceive the environment.In the past decades, researchers have developed many different tactile sensors for robots [1,2,3,4], and the core part of those tactile sensors is to detect the contact and contact force, or force distribution over the fingertip area
Tactile sensing is an important modality for robots, and one of the major challenges for robotic tactile sensing is to develop sensor hardware that can obtain adequate tactile information for multiple perception and manipulation tasks
Summary
Researchers have developed many different tactile sensors for robots [1,2,3,4], and the core part of those tactile sensors is to detect the contact and contact force, or force distribution over the fingertip area. A successfully commercialized sensor is the tactile sensor array from. Pressure Profile Systems, which measures the normal pressure distribution over the robot fingertip, with a spatial resolution of 5 mm. The sensor has been applied to multiple commercialized robots, including the PR2 robot, and Barrett hands, and it successfully assisted common robotic tasks, such as contact detection and gripping force control. With the force measurement from the fingertip tactile sensors, a robot is much less likely to break delicate objects. The contact detection and localization refine the robots’ performance in grasping, and in-hand manipulation
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