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In this paper, we present the design and benchmark of an innovative sensor, ViTacTip, which fulfills the demand for advanced multi-modal sensing in a compact design. A notable feature of ViTacTip is its transparent skin, which incorporates…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-01-07 Dandan Zhang , Wen Fan , Jialin Lin , Haoran Li , Qingzheng Cong , Weiru Liu , Nathan F. Lepora , Shan Luo

Deep learning has the potential to have the impact on robot touch that it has had on robot vision. Optical tactile sensors act as a bridge between the subjects by allowing techniques from vision to be applied to touch. In this paper, we…

Robotics · Computer Science 2020-12-07 Nathan F. Lepora , Alex Church , Conrad De Kerckhove , Raia Hadsell , John Lloyd

Due to their ability to move without sliding relative to their environment, soft growing robots are attractive for deploying distributed sensor networks in confined spaces. Sensing of the state of such robots would also add to their…

Micro-scale continuum robots face significant limitations in achieving three-dimensional contact force perception, primarily due to structural miniaturization, nonlinear mechanical, and sensor integration. To overcome these limitations,…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-03-10 Gang Zhang , Junyan Yan , Jibiao Chen , Shing Shin Cheng

Object properties perceived through the tactile sense, such as weight, friction, and slip, greatly influence motor control during manipulation tasks. However, the provision of tactile information during robotic training in…

Complex robotic tasks require human collaboration to benefit from their high dexterity. Frequent human-robot interaction is mentally demanding and time-consuming. Intuitive and easy-to-use robot control interfaces reduce the negative…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2022-11-03 Sautenkov Oleg , Altamirano Cabrera Miguel , Rakhmatulin Viktor , Tsetserukou Dzmitry

Humans use all of their senses to accomplish different tasks in everyday activities. In contrast, existing work on robotic manipulation mostly relies on one, or occasionally two modalities, such as vision and touch. In this work, we…

Manipulation tasks often require robots to be continuously in contact with an object. Therefore tactile perception systems need to handle continuous contact data. Shear deformation causes the tactile sensor to output path-dependent readings…

Robotics · Computer Science 2021-03-09 Kirsty Aquilina , David A. W. Barton , Nathan F. Lepora

Tactile perception is essential for human interaction with the environment and is becoming increasingly crucial in robotics. Tactile sensors like the BioTac mimic human fingertips and provide detailed interaction data. Despite its utility…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-04-29 Wadhah Zai El Amri , Malte Kuhlmann , Nicolás Navarro-Guerrero

While visuomotor policy learning has advanced robotic manipulation, precisely executing contact-rich tasks remains challenging due to the limitations of vision in reasoning about physical interactions. To address this, recent work has…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-10-29 Venkatesh Pattabiraman , Yifeng Cao , Siddhant Haldar , Lerrel Pinto , Raunaq Bhirangi

Quadrupedal robots have demonstrated remarkable agility and robustness in traversing complex terrains. However, they struggle with dynamic object interactions, where contact must be precisely sensed and controlled. To bridge this gap, we…

Vision and touch are two of the important sensing modalities for humans and they offer complementary information for sensing the environment. Robots could also benefit from such multi-modal sensing ability. In this paper, addressing for the…

Robotics · Computer Science 2018-03-14 Shan Luo , Wenzhen Yuan , Edward Adelson , Anthony G. Cohn , Raul Fuentes

Endowing robots with tactile capabilities opens up new possibilities for their interaction with the environment, including the ability to handle fragile and/or soft objects. In this work, we equip the robot gripper with low-cost…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-06-12 Michael C. Welle , Martina Lippi , Haofei Lu , Jens Lundell , Andrea Gasparri , Danica Kragic

High-resolution optical tactile sensors are increasingly used in robotic learning environments due to their ability to capture large amounts of data directly relating to agent-environment interaction. However, there is a high barrier of…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-07-28 Yijiong Lin , John Lloyd , Alex Church , Nathan F. Lepora

Non-flat surfaces pose difficulties for robots operating in unstructured environments. Reconstructions of uneven surfaces may only be partially possible due to non-compliant end-effectors and limitations on vision systems such as…

Contact-rich manipulation is difficult for robots to execute and requires accurate perception of the environment. In some scenarios, vision is occluded. The robot can then no longer obtain real-time scene state information through visual…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-01-27 Gaozhao Wang , Xing Liu , Zhenduo Ye , Zhengxiong Liu , Panfeng Huang

Simulators perform an important role in prototyping, debugging, and benchmarking new advances in robotics and learning for control. Although many physics engines exist, some aspects of the real world are harder than others to simulate. One…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-02-14 Shaoxiong Wang , Mike Lambeta , Po-Wei Chou , Roberto Calandra

This paper presents a control scheme for force sensitive, gentle grasping with a Pisa/IIT anthropomorphic SoftHand equipped with a miniaturised version of the TacTip optical tactile sensor on all five fingertips. The tactile sensors provide…

This work contributes an event-driven visual-tactile perception system, comprising a novel biologically-inspired tactile sensor and multi-modal spike-based learning. Our neuromorphic fingertip tactile sensor, NeuTouch, scales well with the…

Humans can effortlessly perform very complex, dexterous manipulation tasks by reacting to sensor observations. In contrast, robots can not perform reactive manipulation and they mostly operate in open-loop while interacting with their…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-12-12 Yuki Shirai , Devesh K. Jha , Arvind U. Raghunathan , Dennis Hong