Related papers: Improved Proximity, Contact, and Force Sensing via…

Grasping compliant objects is difficult for robots - applying too little force may cause the grasp to fail, while too much force may lead to object damage. A robot needs to apply the right amount of force to quickly and confidently grasp…

Sensory feedback is the fundamental driving force behind motor control and learning. However, the technology for low-cost and efficient sensory feedback remains a big challenge during stroke rehabilitation, and for prosthetic designs. Here…

Levitated optomechanics is showing potential for precise force measurements. Here, we report a case study, to show experimentally the capacity of such a force sensor. Using an electric field as a tool to detect a Coulomb force applied onto…

Robots built from soft materials will inherently apply lower environmental forces than their rigid counterparts, and therefore may be more suitable in sensitive settings with unintended contact. However, these robots' applied forces result…

Identifying changes in contact during contact-rich manipulation can detect task state or errors, enabling improved robustness and autonomy. The ability to detect contact is affected by the mechatronic design of the robot, especially its…

Capacitive pressure sensors have several advantages in areas such as robotics, automation, aerospace, biomedical and consumer electronics. We present mathematical modelling, finite element analysis (FEA), fabrication and experimental…

Sound is a rich information medium that transmits through air; people communicate through speech and can even discern material through tapping and listening. To capture frequencies in the human hearing range, commercial microphones…

Rotational displacement about the grasping point is a common grasp failure when an object is grasped at a location away from its center of gravity. Tactile sensors with soft surfaces, such as GelSight sensors, can detect the rotation…

Diagnostic activities, such as ultrasound scans and palpation, are relatively low-cost. They play a crucial role in the early detection of health problems and in assessing their progression. However, they are also error-prone activities,…

This paper proposes a wearable-controlled mobile manipulator system for intelligent smart home assistance, integrating MEMS capacitive microphones, IMU sensors, vibration motors, and pressure feedback to enhance human-robot interaction. The…

Aerial manipulation has gained interest in completing high-altitude tasks that are challenging for human workers, such as contact inspection and defect detection, etc. Previous research has focused on maintaining static contact points or…

A high sensitivity force sensor based on dielectric microspheres in vacuum, optically trapped by a single, upward-propagating laser beam, is described. Off-axis parabolic mirrors are used both to focus the 1064~nm trapping beam and to…

Tactile sensing in soft robots remains particularly challenging because of the coupling between contact and deformation information which the sensor is subject to during actuation and interaction with the environment. This often results in…

Soft robots are intrinsically capable of adapting to different environments by changing their shape in response to interaction forces with the environment. However, sensing and feedback are still required for higher level decisions and…

When robots are able to see and respond to their surroundings, a whole new world of possibilities opens up. To bring these possibilities to life, the robotics industry is increasingly adopting camera-based vision systems, especially when a…

The sense of touch plays a key role in enabling humans to understand and interact with surrounding environments. For robots, tactile sensing is also irreplaceable. While interacting with objects, tactile sensing provides useful information…

Sensing weak forces through observing a mechanical motion near or below its quantum zero-point fluctuation has been desired in diverse areas. While mechanical oscillators have played a crucial role in such studies, their application to…

Reliably planning fingertip grasps for multi-fingered hands lies as a key challenge for many tasks including tool use, insertion, and dexterous in-hand manipulation. This task becomes even more difficult when the robot lacks an accurate…

Tactile perception is an essential ability of intelligent robots in interaction with their surrounding environments. This perception as an intermediate level acts between sensation and action and has to be defined properly to generate…

We aim to recover the geometry of 3D parametric scenes using very few depth measurements from low-cost, commercially available time-of-flight sensors. These sensors offer very low spatial resolution (i.e., a single pixel), but image a wide…