Home // INTELLI 2020, The Ninth International Conference on Intelligent Systems and Applications // View article

Surface Sensing of 3D Objects Using Vibrissa-like Intelligent Tactile Sensors

Authors:
Lukas Merker
Moritz Scharff
Klaus Zimmermann
Carsten Behn

Keywords: Vibrissa; tactile sensor; surface sensing; surface reconstruction;

Abstract:
Interacting with the environment, many robots would benefit from advanced tactile sensors complementing optical sensors in particular when operating under poor visibility. In nature, rats exhibit a prominent tactile sense organ, the socalled vibrissae. For instance, these enable rats to detect shape and texture information of objects based on few contacts. Since vibrissae consist of dead tissue, all sensing is performed in the support of each vibrissa, the follicle-sinus complex. Inspired by this characteristic measuring principle, we set up a mechanical model, consisting of a cylindrical, one-sided clamped bending rod, which is swept along a 3D object surface undergoing large deflections. In doing so, the focus is on both simulating the scanning sweep in order to determine the support reactions of the rod during object scanning and subsequently using these quantities in order to reconstruct a sequence of contact points as a basis for shape reconstruction. The simulated scanning sweeps include tip and tangential contacts, as well as longitudinal, lateral and axial slip. The object reconstruction reveals that simple scanning kinematics, e.g., passive dragging of the tactile sensor on a mobile robot, are sufficient in order to capture fragments of object shapes and thus to complement data gathered by optical sensors.

Pages: 18 to 23

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2020

Publication date: October 18, 2020

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4065

ISBN: 978-1-61208-798-6

Location: Porto, Portugal

Dates: from October 18, 2020 to October 22, 2020