Force and Tactile Sensing for Robots

A special issue of Electronics (ISSN 2079-9292). This special issue belongs to the section "Computer Science & Engineering".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2021) | Viewed by 2265

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
1. Donders Institute for Brain and Cognition, Radboud University, 6500 GL Nijmegen, The Netherlands
2. Department of Research, New Technologies, Innovations, BMW Group, 80788 München, Germany
Interests: tactile intelligence; tactile robotics; tactile sensing; active sensation active perception; artificial intelligence; cognitive systems

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Guest Editor
Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA-98195, USA
Interests: healthcare robotics; robot-world physical interactions

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The sense of touch is a crucial capability for us to cope with the challenges of everyday life. It enables grasping, manipulation, learning, as well as decision making based on the information we get from the hundreds of mechanoreceptors distributed over our skin. This sense of touch is a capability that robotic systems, prosthetics, and intelligent vehicles of the future need to provide. Firstly, it is necessary to be able to safely collaborate and interact with humans, and secondly, it is essential for them to properly fulfill the tasks they are designed for: overtaking dull tasks in industry, consumer services, and other highly dynamic environments, assistance and care for elderly, housekeeping, etc. For those and many more applications, soft systems are considered the future of robotics. These systems are conformal and compliant and thus provide the necessary prerequisites for ubiquitous robotics, which does not require bothersome and bulky housings any more. Soft robotics is an emerging research field with a variety of novel materials and technologies enabling new designs and strategies, especially with respect to integration. Gripper design, control, and also grasping strategies for soft robotic devices are topics of vivid research. Moreover, it is important to develop sensors and integration strategies for those sensors to enable tactile sensing. We believe that the adoption of such novel materials and technologies is also essential to bring robotics devices closer to ubiquitous usage in everyday life as well as industry. Consequently, this Special Issue gives an opportunity to researchers from robotics as well as from the discipline of material and technology development to get an insight into the excellent work done in the respective fields.

Asst. Prof. Dr. Mohsen Kaboli
Dr. Tapomayukh Bhattacharjee
Guest Editors

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Keywords

Tactile Sensing Technologies

  • Conformable and compliant materials
  • Features enabled by conformable sensors
  • Biomimetics
  • Sensor effects
  • Integration and read-out strategies
  • Self-healing properties and strategies
  • Sensor skins: design, fabrication, and integration strategies
  • Integration strategies for sensors in robotics
  • Enabling technologies for fully integrated robotic systems

Tactile Objects’ Perception 

  • Tactile information processing
  • Tactile feature extraction/feature learning 
  • Tactile-based object modeling 
  • Tactile object localization
  • Tactile shape reconstruction and recognition
  • Tactile object classification
  • Tactile exploration
  • Trends in combining of vision and touch sensing
  • Roles of vision and touch sensing in different object perception tasks
  • Modeling and representation of sensing modalities
  • Integration of visiotactile sensing modalities

Tactile Objects’ Interaction, Grasp, and Manipulation

  • Linear/rotational slip detection 
  • Grasping planning
  • Grasp stability assessment
  • In-hand/whole body manipulation
  • Tactile planning interplay between touch sensing and vision
  • Tactile knowledge/skill transfer  
  • Tactile transfer learning
  • The meaning and function of different sensing modalities in object manipulation
  • Sensing and planning in object manipulation
  • Multirobot manipulation and coordination
  • Control strategy for object manipulation and collaborative assembly
  • Learning object manipulation skills from human demonstration

Tactile-based Human–Robot Interaction

Tactile-Based Human–Robot Communication

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

14 pages, 9007 KiB  
Article
Tactile Sensor Data Interpretation for Estimation of Wire Features
by Andrea Cirillo, Gianluca Laudante and Salvatore Pirozzi
Electronics 2021, 10(12), 1458; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10121458 - 18 Jun 2021
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1605
Abstract
At present, the tactile perception is essential for robotic applications when performing complex manipulation tasks, e.g., grasping objects of different shapes and sizes, distinguishing between different textures, and avoiding slips by grasping an object with a minimal force. Considering Deformable Linear Object manipulation [...] Read more.
At present, the tactile perception is essential for robotic applications when performing complex manipulation tasks, e.g., grasping objects of different shapes and sizes, distinguishing between different textures, and avoiding slips by grasping an object with a minimal force. Considering Deformable Linear Object manipulation applications, this paper presents an efficient and straightforward method to allow robots to autonomously work with thin objects, e.g., wires, and to recognize their features, i.e., diameter, by relying on tactile sensors developed by the authors. The method, based on machine learning algorithms, is described in-depth in the paper to make it easily reproducible by the readers. Experimental tests show the effectiveness of the approach that is able to properly recognize the considered object’s features with a recognition rate up to 99.9%. Moreover, a pick and place task, which uses the method to classify and organize a set of wires by diameter, is presented. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Force and Tactile Sensing for Robots)
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