Tactile control for object tracking and dynamic contour following

Abstract

We live in a constantly changing world. For robots to fully operate in our world, they need to work in dynamic environments where objects are not fixed in place or may be moved by humans or other agents. This work is based on tactile sensing, as it enables sufficiently responsive robotic systems for contact-based tasks in dynamic environments. Our proposed approach is divided into two parts: (1) a way to perform object following using a shear controller that minimises tactile shear deformation and (2) a switching controller that alternates between the shear controller and a tactile exploration controller that enables contour-following of a moving object. We find that during the object-following task, the robot follows the moving object to sub-millimetre accuracy over a ≈72 mm range for 5 different velocities in 2D. The switching controller successfully performs 2D contour following on several moving objects at various object speeds whilst keeping an almost constant speed of exploration. We expect our method for minimising sensor deformation using a simple controller will generalise over different kinds of contact scenarios for moving objects. Moreover, the switching controller provides an architecture where velocity information of moving objects is fused with another controller thereby enabling a more holistic use of tactile information to empower robotic systems to perform complex tactile tasks.