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Design and realization of autonomous robotic platforms require crucial information on their surroundings especially when robots should interact with the environment and humans. In many cases, perception is necessary to correctly accomplish tasks in a dynamic environment where a model is hard to obtain. Grasping and fine manipulation of objects with...
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Product miniaturization is a key aspect of manufacturing nowadays. Computer numerically controlled (CNC) machine tools are the major tools used in manufacturing industries for producing miniaturized products. However, CNC machines are still big, bulky and stationary. This research is an effort to develop a modular machine on a robotic platform whic...
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... Among most tactile sensors described in the literature [3,[9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17], only a few are easily integrated into existing robotic grippers. The companies Touchence, XELA Robotics, and Contactile have developed sensor arrays that can be easily added to robotic grippers, mainly due to their small size. ...
... However, normally, they tend to be utilized in a probelike fashion such as for surgical instruments and struggle to be arrayed [6]. Cirillo et al. presented a photo-diode-based tactile sensor with a 25-element array using photodetectors and one deformable surface [15,33]. However, it requires two proportionally large PCBs to facilitate the readout of the sensing elements and only detects normal force changes [33]. ...
Real-time multi-axis distributed tactile sensing is a critical capability if robots are to perform stable gripping and dexterous manipulation, as it provides crucial information about the sensor–object interface. In this paper, we present an optical-based six-axis tactile sensor designed in a fingertip shape for robotic dexterous manipulation. The distributed sensor can precisely estimate the local XYZ force and displacement at ten distinct locations and provide the global XYZ force and torque measurements. Its compact size, comparable to that of a human thumb, and minimal thickness allow seamless integration onto existing robotic fingers, eliminating the need for complex modifications to the gripper. The proposed sensor design uses a simple, low-cost fabrication method. Moreover, the optical transduction approach uses light angle and intensity sensing to infer force and displacement from deformations of the individual sensing units that form the overall sensor, providing distributed six-axis sensing. The local force precision at each sensing unit in the X, Y, and Z axes is 20.89 mN, 19.19 mN, and 43.22 mN, respectively, over a local force range of approximately ±1.5 N in X and Y and 0 to −2 N in Z. The local displacement precision in the X, Y, and Z axes is 56.70 μm, 50.18 μm, and 13.83 μm, respectively, over a local displacement range of ±2 mm in the XY directions and 0 to −1.5 mm in Z (i.e., compression). Additionally, the sensor can measure global torques, Tx, Ty, and Tz, with a precision of of 1.90 N-mm, 1.54 N-mm, and 1.26 N-mm, respectively. The fabricated design is showcased by integrating it with an OnRobot RG2 gripper and illustrating real-time measurements during in simple demonstration task, which generated changing global forces and torques.
... Among most tactile sensors described in the literature [3,[9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]] only a few are easily integrated into existing robotic grippers. The companies Touchence, XELA Robotics and Contactile have developed sensor arrays that can be easily added to robotic grippers, mainly due to their small size. ...
... However, normally, they tend to be utilized in probe-like uses such as for surgical instruments and struggle to be arrayed [6]. Cirillo et al. presented a photo-diode-based tactile sensor with a 25-element array using photodetectors and one deformable surface [15,33]. However, it requires two proportionally large PCBs to facilitate the readout of the sensing elements and only detects normal force changes [33]. ...
Real-time multi-axis distributed tactile sensing is a critical capability if robots are to perform stable gripping and dexterous manipulation, as it provides crucial information about the sensor-object interface. In this paper, we present an optical-based 6-axis tactile sensor designed in a fingertip shape for robotic dexterous manipulation. The distributed sensor can precisely estimate local XYZ force and displacement at ten distinct locations, and provide global XYZ force and torque measurements. Its compact size, comparable to that of a human thumb, and minimal thickness allow seamless integration onto existing robotic fingers, eliminating the need for complex modifications to the gripper. The proposed sensor design uses a simple, low-cost fabrication method. Moreover, the optical transduction approach uses light angle and intensity sensing to infer force and displacement from deformations of individual sensing units that form the overall sensor, providing distributed 6-axis sensing. The local force precision at each sensing unit in the X, Y, and Z axes is 20.89 mN, 19.19 mN, and 43.22 mN, respectively, over an local force range of approximately ±1.5 N in X and Y and 0 to -2 N in Z. The local displacement precision in the X, Y and Z axes is 56.70 μm, 50.18 μm and 13.83 μm, respectively, over a local displacement range of ±2 mm in the XY directions and 0 to -1.5mm in Z (i.e., compression). Additionally, the sensor can measure global torques, Tx, Ty and Tz, with a precision of of 1.90 N-mm, 1.54 N-mm and 1.26 N-mm, respectively. The fabricated design is showcased by integrating it with an OnRobot RG2 gripper and illustrating real-time measurements during in simple demonstration task which generate changing global forces and torques.
... Some authors of this paper are working on the development of force/tactile sensors based on optoelectronic technology since ten years about, mainly focusing on novel and challenging applications proposed in the robotics field. The reader could refer to past works [13,14] for the design of previous sensor solutions. Each of them present design features, suitably developed to address specific challenges related to actual use cases. ...
Tactile data perception is of paramount importance in today’s robotics applications. This paper describes the latest design of the tactile sensor developed in our laboratory. Both the hardware and firmware concepts are reported in detail in order to allow the research community the sensor reproduction, also according to their needs. The sensor is based on optoelectronic technology and the pad shape can be adapted to various robotics applications. A flat surface, as the one proposed in this paper, can be well exploited if the object sizes are smaller than the pad and/or the shape recognition is needed, while a domed pad can be used to manipulate bigger objects. Compared to the previous version, the novel tactile sensor has a larger sensing area and a more robust electronic, mechanical and software design that yields less noise and higher flexibility. The proposed design exploits standard PCB manufacturing processes and advanced but now commercial 3D printing processes for the realization of all components. A GitHub repository has been prepared with all files needed to allow the reproduction of the sensor for the interested reader. The whole sensor has been tested with a maximum load equal to 15N, by showing a sensitivity equal to 0.018V/N. Moreover, a complete and detailed characterization for the single taxel and the whole pad is reported to show the potentialities of the sensor also in terms of response time, repeatability, hysteresis and signal to noise ratio.
... This section briefly recalls for completeness the working principle of the tactile sensor and discusses the generalization of the design procedure, partially presented by the authors in [26], which allows to obtain an optimal design of distributed sensors with high conformability. ...
Safety of human-robot physical interaction is enabled not only by suitable robot control strategies but also by suitable sensing technologies. For example, if distributed tactile sensors were available on the robot, they could be used not only to detect unintentional collisions, but also as human-machine interface by enabling a new mode of social interaction with the machine. Starting from their previous works, the authors developed a conformable distributed tactile sensor that can be easily conformed to the different parts of the robot body. Its ability of estimating contact force components and to provide a tactile map with an accurate spatial resolution enables the robot to handle both unintentional collisions in safe human-robot collaboration tasks and intentional touches where the sensor is used as human-machine interface. In this paper, the authors present the characterization of the proposed tactile sensor and they show how it can be also exploited to recognize haptic tactile gestures, by tailoring recognition algorithms, well known in the image processing field, to the case of tactile images. In particular, a set of haptic gestures has been defined to test three recognition algorithms on a group of 20 users. The paper demonstrates how the same sensor originally designed to manage unintentional collisions can be successfully used also as human-machine interface.
This paper presents the design and implementation of a Tactile/Force sensor which has been used on a 3-DOF decoupled parallel mechanism for Human-Robot Interaction purposes.The sensor, called HexaTactile, is a soft tactile sensor array based on six MEMS barometers, where each of them is covered by a silicone layer in the form of an incomplete pyramid. HexaTactile consists of six soft and highly sensitive tactile modules which are placed on six sides of a cube to allow simultaneous measurement of the force in the positive and negative directions along the x, y and z axes. Some of the advantages of this sensor can be regarded as its high precision, excellent linearity (coefficient of determination r²=0.99), low cost and low noise. The accuracy of the sensor is 0.01 N, within a range of 4 N and therefore HexaTactile can be suitably attached to a robot end-effector for human-robot interaction applications. Then, using the proposed force sensor some control scenarios, including fixed admittance control and active admittance control are applied for human-robot interaction purposes. From the experimental tests, it has been revealed that the active admittance control solved the drawbacks of fixed admittance control, for the considered case studies.
This paper defines and analyzes a cooperative aerial payload transport mission in which an onsite human supervisor provides haptic motion cues. While multiple small aerial robots (e.g., quadcopters) carry the weight of the payload, a human specifies traversal direction changes to the quadcopter team by exerting a pushing force on the payload. We show how the principle of linear momentum can be used for limited human intent recognition in this supervisory control application. This problem is formulated as real-time path planning of the quadcopter team using a continuum deformation cooperative control protocol that assures avoidance of interagent and obstacle collisions as well as safety of the human supervisor.
In this paper, a novel approach to detect incipient slip based on the contact area between a transparent silicone medium and different objects using a neuromorphic event-based vision sensor (DAVIS) is proposed. Event-based algorithms are developed to detect incipient slip, slip, stress distribution and object vibration. Thirty-seven experiments were performed on five objects with different sizes, shapes, materials and weights to compare precision and response time of the proposed approach. The proposed approach is validated by using a high speed constitutional camera (1000 FPS). The results indicate that the sensor can detect incipient slippage with an average of 44.1 ms latency in unstructured environment for various objects. It is worth mentioning that the experiments were conducted in an uncontrolled experimental environment, therefore adding high noise levels that affected results significantly. However, eleven of the experiments had a detection latency below 10 ms which shows the capability of this method. The results are very promising and show a high potential of the sensor being used for manipulation applications especially in dynamic environments.
