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Sensing touch on arbitrary surfaces has long been a goal of ubiquitous computing, but often requires instrumenting the surface. Depth camera-based systems have emerged as a promising solution for minimizing instrumentation, but at the cost…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2025-03-04 Ziyi Xia , Xincheng Huang , Sidney S Fels , Robert Xiao

For contact-intensive tasks, the ability to generate policies that produce comprehensive tactile-aware motions is essential. However, existing data collection and skill learning systems for dexterous manipulation often suffer from…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-01-30 Xingyu Zhang , Chaofan Zhang , Boyue Zhang , Zhinan Peng , Shaowei Cui , Shuo Wang

Capacitive technology allows building sensors that are small, compact and have high sensitivity. For this reason it has been widely adopted in robotics. In a previous work we presented a compliant skin system based on capacitive technology…

Robotics · Computer Science 2021-06-30 Perla Maiolino , Marco Maggiali , Giorgio Cannata , Giorgio Metta , Lorenzo Natale

This paper presents a shear-based control scheme for grasping and manipulating delicate objects with a Pisa/IIT anthropomorphic SoftHand equipped with soft biomimetic tactile sensors on all five fingertips. These `microTac' tactile sensors…

Dexterous manipulation, especially of small daily objects, continues to pose complex challenges in robotics. This paper introduces the DenseTact-Mini, an optical tactile sensor with a soft, rounded, smooth gel surface and compact design…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-09-19 Won Kyung Do , Ankush Kundan Dhawan , Mathilda Kitzmann , Monroe Kennedy

The ability to perform locomotion in various terrains is critical for legged robots. However, the robot has to have a better understanding of the surface it is walking on to perform robust locomotion on different terrains. Animals and…

Human skin provides a rich tactile sensing stream, localizing intentional and unintentional contact events over a large and contoured region. Replicating these tactile sensing capabilities for dexterous robotic manipulation systems remains…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-09-24 Suzannah Wistreich , Baiyu Shi , Stephen Tian , Samuel Clarke , Michael Nath , Chengyi Xu , Zhenan Bao , Jiajun Wu

Most vision-based tactile sensors use elastomer deformation to infer tactile information, which can not sense some modalities, like temperature. As an important part of human tactile perception, temperature sensing can help robots better…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-02-02 Ziwu Song , Ran Yu , Xuan Zhang , Kit Wa Sou , Shilong Mu , Dengfeng Peng , Xiao-Ping Zhang , Wenbo Ding

Grasping object,whether they are flat, round, or narrow and whether they have regular or irregular shapes,introduces difficulties in determining the ideal grasping posture, even for the most state-of-the-art grippers. In this article, we…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-05-07 Chenghua Lu , Kailuan Tang , Max Yang , Tianqi Yue , Nathan F. Lepora

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

Development of large-area, high-speed electronic skins is a grand challenge for robotics, prosthetics, and human-machine interfaces, but is fundamentally limited by wiring complexity and data bottlenecks. Here, we introduce Single-Pixel…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-11-24 Ariel Slepyan , Laura Xing , Rudy Zhang , Nitish Thakor

Humans seemingly incorporate potential touch signals in their perception. Our goal is to equip robots with a similar capability, which we term Imagine2touch. Imagine2touch aims to predict the expected touch signal based on a visual patch…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-05-03 Abdallah Ayad , Adrian Röfer , Nick Heppert , Abhinav Valada

Physical human-robot interaction (pHRI) remains a key challenge for achieving intuitive and safe interaction with robots. Current advancements often rely on external tactile sensors as interface, which increase the complexity of robotic…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-05-27 Teresa Sinico , Giovanni Boschetti , Pedro Neto

This work deals with a practical everyday problem: stable object placement on flat surfaces starting from unknown initial poses. Common object-placing approaches require either complete scene specifications or extrinsic sensor measurements,…

The manipulation of large objects and safe operation in the vicinity of humans are key capabilities of a general purpose domestic robotic assistant. We present the design of a soft, tactile-sensing humanoid upper-body robot and demonstrate…

High cost and lack of reliability has precluded the widespread adoption of dexterous hands in robotics. Furthermore, the lack of a viable tactile sensor capable of sensing over the entire area of the hand impedes the rich, low-level…

We introduce a new class of vision-based sensor and associated algorithmic processes that combine visual imaging with high-resolution tactile sending, all in a uniform hardware and computational architecture. We demonstrate the sensor's…

Tactile sensors can significantly enhance the perception of humanoid robotics systems by providing contact information that facilitates human-like interactions. However, existing commercial tactile sensors focus on improving the resolution…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-01-09 Haoran Guo , Haoyang Wang , Zhengxiong Li , Lingfeng Tao

Tactile sensors, which provide information about the physical properties of objects, are an essential component of robotic systems. The visuotactile sensing technology with the merits of high resolution and low cost has facilitated the…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-06-19 Shoujie Li , Zihan Wang , Changsheng Wu , Xiang Li , Shan Luo , Bin Fang , Fuchun Sun , Xiao-Ping Zhang , Wenbo Ding

Human demonstrations collected by wearable devices (e.g., tactile gloves) provide fast and dexterous supervision for policy learning, and are guided by rich, natural tactile feedback. However, a key challenge is how to transfer…