Tactile Reconstruction of Contact Task Frames and Forces for Hybrid Force/Motion Control

Key points

• Hybrid force/motion control requires knowledge of the interaction force and of a task frame defining the force- and motion-controlled directions.1
• The proposed method maps a single image of the deformed elastomer of a soft optical tactile sensor to observable contact variables: indentation depth, two surface-to-sensor tilt angles, and 3D contact force, each with a per-sample uncertainty estimate.1
• The tactile measurement is then fused with robot proprioceptive data in an Extended Kalman Filter, producing a continuously updated estimate of the contact task frame and of the interaction force.1
• Control experiments with a DigiTac sensor mounted on a UR10 manipulator demonstrate closed-loop contact force regulation against a flat rigid board in linear and angular motion by a human operator, with touch as the only exteroceptive feedback.1

Sources (1)

• [1]Tactile Reconstruction of Contact Task Frames and Forces for Hybrid Force/Motion Control
  arXiv (AI, ML, NLP, CV, robotics, multi-agent) · Oct 7, 01:09 PM

  This work addresses the online estimation of the contact force and a possibly time-varying task frame using only soft optical tactile sensing, under the assumption of locally planar contact with a negligible contact moment.

  Hybrid force/motion control requires knowledge of the interaction force and of a task frame defining the force- and motion-controlled directions.

Extractive summary: sentences quoted from the sources.