Related papers: PneuGelSight: Soft Robotic Vision-Based Propriocep…
Interacting with the world is a multi-sensory experience: achieving effective general-purpose interaction requires making use of all available modalities -- including vision, touch, and audio -- to fill in gaps from partial observation. For…
We present a tactile sensing method enabled by the mechanical compliance of soft robots; an externally attachable photoreflective module reads surface deformation of silicone skin to estimate contact force without embedding tactile…
Humans perceive the world by interacting with objects, which often happens in a dynamic way. For example, a human would shake a bottle to guess its content. However, it remains a challenge for robots to understand many dynamic signals…
Tactile sensing is critical for robotic grasping and manipulation of objects under visual occlusion. However, in contrast to simulations of robot arms and cameras, current simulations of tactile sensors have limited accuracy, speed, and…
Due to the complexity of modeling the elastic properties of materials, the use of machine learning algorithms is continuously increasing for tactile sensing applications. Recent advances in deep neural networks applied to computer vision…
The development of vision-based tactile sensors has significantly enhanced robots' perception and manipulation capabilities, especially for tasks requiring contact-rich interactions with objects. In this work, we present DTactive, a novel…
Recently, several morphologies, each with its advantages, have been proposed for the \textit{GelSight} high-resolution tactile sensors. However, existing simulation methods are limited to flat-surface sensors, which prevents their usage…
This paper introduces mathematical models of \sensors\ for mobile robots based on visibility. Serving a purpose similar to the pinhole camera model for computer vision, the introduced models are expected to provide a useful, idealized…
Compliance is a critical parameter for describing objects in engineering, agriculture, and biomedical applications. Traditional compliance detection methods are limited by their lack of portability and scalability, rely on specialized,…
Sensing contacts throughout the fingers is an essential capability for a robot to perform manipulation tasks in cluttered environments. However, existing tactile sensors either only have a flat sensing surface or a compliant tip with a…
The integration of tactile sensing into compliant soft robotic grippers offers a compelling pathway toward advanced robotic grasping and safer human-robot interactions. Visual-tactile sensors realize high-resolution, large-area tactile…
Soft sensors have continued growing interest in robotics, due to their ability to enable both passive conformal contact from the material properties and active contact data from the sensor properties. However, the same properties of…
Simulation is widely used in robotics for system verification and large-scale data collection. However, simulating sensors, including tactile sensors, has been a long-standing challenge. In this paper, we propose Taxim, a realistic and…
Proximity perception is a technology that has the potential to play an essential role in the future of robotics. It can fulfill the promise of safe, robust, and autonomous systems in industry and everyday life, alongside humans, as well as…
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…
In this paper, we study integrated estimation and control of soft robots. A significant challenge in deploying closed loop controllers is reliable proprioception via integrated sensing in soft robots. Despite the considerable advances…
Soft robots are typically approximated as low-dimensional systems, especially when learning-based methods are used. This leads to models that are limited in their capability to predict the large number of deformation modes and interactions…
Soft pneumatic legged robots show promise in their ability to traverse a range of different types of terrain, including natural unstructured terrain met in applications like precision agriculture. They can adapt their body morphology to the…
Camera-based tactile sensors are emerging as a promising inexpensive solution for tactile-enhanced manipulation tasks. A recently introduced FingerVision sensor was shown capable of generating reliable signals for force estimation, object…
Robot simulation has been an essential tool for data-driven manipulation tasks. However, most existing simulation frameworks lack either efficient and accurate models of physical interactions with tactile sensors or realistic tactile…