Related papers: TwinTac: A Wide-Range, Highly Sensitive Tactile Se…
Reinforcement Learning (RL) methods have been widely applied for robotic manipulations via sim-to-real transfer, typically with proprioceptive and visual information. However, the incorporation of tactile sensing into RL for contact-rich…
Tactile sensing is inherently contact based. To use tactile data, robots need to make contact with the surface of an object. This is inefficient in applications where an agent needs to make a decision between multiple alternatives that…
Robots have been brought to work close to humans in many scenarios. For coexistence and collaboration, robots should be safe and pleasant for humans to interact with. To this end, the robots could be both physically soft with multimodal…
In general, robotic dexterous hands are equipped with various sensors for acquiring multimodal contact information such as position, force, and pose of the grasped object. This multi-sensor-based design adds complexity to the robotic…
Using tactile sensors for manipulation remains one of the most challenging problems in robotics. At the heart of these challenges is generalization: How can we train a tactile-based policy that can manipulate unseen and diverse objects? In…
Tactile sensing is crucial for achieving human-level robotic capabilities in manipulation tasks. As a promising solution, Vision-Based Tactile Sensors (VBTSs) offer high spatial resolution and cost-effectiveness, but present unique…
Visuotactile sensors provide high-resolution tactile information but are incapable of perceiving the material features of objects. We present UltraTac, an integrated sensor that combines visuotactile imaging with ultrasound sensing through…
Tactile sensors are increasingly integrated into dexterous robotic manipulators to enhance contact perception. However, learning manipulation policies that rely on tactile sensing remains challenging, primarily due to the trade-off between…
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…
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…
Combining 3D vision with tactile sensing could unlock a greater level of dexterity for robots and improve several manipulation tasks. However, obtaining a close-up 3D view of the location where manipulation contacts occur can be…
Robotic pushing is a fundamental manipulation task that requires tactile feedback to capture subtle contact forces and dynamics between the end-effector and the object. However, real tactile sensors often face hardware limitations such as…
Imitation learning methods need significant human supervision to learn policies robust to changes in object poses, physical disturbances, and visual distractors. Reinforcement learning, on the other hand, can explore the environment…
Vision-based tactile sensors have drawn increasing interest in the robotics community. However, traditional lens-based designs impose minimum thickness constraints on these sensors, limiting their applicability in space-restricted settings.…
As more robots are implemented for contact-rich tasks, tactile sensors are in increasing demand. For many circumstances, the contact is required to be compliant, and soft sensors are in need. This paper introduces a novelly designed soft…
Robots which interact with the physical world will benefit from a fine-grained tactile understanding of objects and surfaces. Additionally, for certain tasks, robots may need to know the haptic properties of an object before touching it. To…
A long-standing question in robot hand design is how accurate tactile sensing must be. This paper uses simulated tactile signals and the reinforcement learning (RL) framework to study the sensing needs in grasping systems. Our first…
Digital twins are models of real-world systems that can simulate their dynamics in response to potential actions. In complex settings, the state and action variables, and available data and knowledge relevant to a system can constantly…
Tactile feedback is generally recognized to be crucial for effective interaction with the physical world. However, state-of-the-art Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models lack the ability to interpret and use tactile signals, limiting their…
In conjunction with huge recent progress in camera and computer vision technology, camera-based sensors have increasingly shown considerable promise in relation to tactile sensing. In comparison to competing technologies (be they resistive,…