A Soft Robotic Cover with Dual Thermal Display and Sensing Capabilities
This work addresses the need for enhanced tactile feedback in robotics, particularly for applications like prosthetics or human-robot interaction, by integrating thermal display and sensing into a soft cover, though it appears incremental as it builds on known thermal cue importance.
The researchers developed a soft robotic cover that can both display desired temperatures and sense human contact, using water circulation for thermal control and an observer for heat estimation without direct surface sensors, achieving effective temperature regulation and contact detection in human hand experiments.
We propose a new robotic cover prototype that achieves thermal display while also being soft. We focus on the thermal cue because previous human studies have identified it as part of the touch pleasantness. The robotic cover surface can be regulated to the desired temperature by circulating water through a thermally conductive pipe embedded in the cover, of which temperature is controlled. Besides, an observer for estimating heat from human contact is implemented; it can detect human interaction while displaying the desired temperature without temperature sensing on the surface directly. We assessed the validity of the prototype in experiments of temperature control and contact detection by human hand.