Color-Coded Fiber-Optic Tactile Sensor for an Elastomeric Robot Skin
This work addresses the need for robust tactile sensing in robotics, though it is incremental as it builds on existing optical fiber and camera-based methods.
The researchers developed a color-coded fiber-optic tactile sensor for robotic skin to enable safe interaction with the environment, achieving a force sensing range up to 18 N with a resolution of about 3.6 N and spatial resolution of 8 mm.
The sense of touch is essential for reliable mapping between the environment and a robot which interacts physically with objects. Presumably, an artificial tactile skin would facilitate safe interaction of the robots with the environment. In this work, we present our color-coded tactile sensor, incorporating plastic optical fibers (POF), transparent silicone rubber and an off-the-shelf color camera. Processing electronics are placed away from the sensing surface to make the sensor robust to harsh environments. Contact localization is possible thanks to the lower number of light sources compared to the number of camera POFs. Classical machine learning techniques and a hierarchical classification scheme were used for contact localization. Specifically, we generated the mapping from stimulation to sensation of a robotic perception system using our sensor. We achieved a force sensing range up to 18 N with the force resolution of around 3.6~N and the spatial resolution of 8~mm. The color-coded tactile sensor is suitable for tactile exploration and might enable further innovations in robust tactile sensing.