Related papers: Active Tactile Exploration for Rigid Body Pose and…
Locating and grasping of objects by robots is typically performed using visual sensors. Haptic feedback from contacts with the environment is only secondary if present at all. In this work, we explored an extreme case of searching for and…
We present an active tactile exploration framework for joint object recognition and 6D pose estimation. The proposed method integrates wrist force/torque sensing, GelSight tactile sensing, and free-space constraints within a Bayesian…
Inferring physical properties can significantly enhance robotic manipulation by enabling robots to handle objects safely and efficiently through adaptive grasping strategies. Previous approaches have typically relied on either tactile or…
Robots struggle to understand object properties like shape, material, and semantics due to limited prior knowledge, hindering manipulation in unstructured environments. In contrast, humans learn these properties through interactive…
High-resolution tactile sensing can provide accurate information about local contact in contact-rich robotic tasks. However, the deployment of such tasks in unstructured environments remains under-investigated. To improve the robustness of…
We propose a means of omni-directional contact detection using accelerometers instead of tactile sensors for object shape estimation using touch. Unlike tactile sensors, our contact-based detection method tends to induce a degree of…
We study the problem of rapidly identifying contact dynamics of unknown objects in partially known environments. The key innovation of our method is a novel formulation of the contact dynamics estimation problem as the joint estimation of…
Controlling the shape of deformable linear objects using robots and constraints provided by environmental fixtures has diverse industrial applications. In order to establish robust contacts with these fixtures, accurate estimation of the…
Tactile and visual perception are both crucial for humans to perform fine-grained interactions with their environment. Developing similar multi-modal sensing capabilities for robots can significantly enhance and expand their manipulation…
The connection between visual input and tactile sensing is critical for object manipulation tasks such as grasping and pushing. In this work, we introduce the challenging task of estimating a set of tactile physical properties from visual…
Dexterous manipulation of objects through fine control of physical contacts is essential for many important tasks of daily living. A fundamental ability underlying fine contact control is compliant control, \textit{i.e.}, controlling the…
Collision-free motion is often aided by tactile and proximity sensors distributed on the body of the robot due to their resistance to occlusion as opposed to external cameras. However, how to shape the sensor's properties, such as sensing…
3D posture estimation is important in analyzing and improving ergonomics in physical human-robot interaction and reducing the risk of musculoskeletal disorders. Vision-based posture estimation approaches are prone to sensor and model…
Can a robot grasp an unknown object without seeing it? In this paper, we present a tactile-sensing based approach to this challenging problem of grasping novel objects without prior knowledge of their location or physical properties. Our…
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…
Manipulation of deformable objects is a challenging task for a robot. It will be problematic to use a single sensory input to track the behaviour of such objects: vision can be subjected to occlusions, whereas tactile inputs cannot capture…
As humans can explore and understand the world through active touch, similar capability is desired for robots. In this paper, we address the problem of active tactile object recognition, pose estimation and shape transfer learning, where a…
We investigate the transduction of tactile information during active exploration of finely textured surfaces using a novel tactile sensor mimicking the human fingertip. The sensor has been designed by integrating a linear array of 10…
Humans represent and discriminate the objects in the same category using their properties, and an intelligent robot should be able to do the same. In this paper, we build a robot system that can autonomously perceive the object properties…
We introduce GEOTACT, the first robotic system capable of grasping and retrieving objects of potentially unknown shapes buried in a granular environment. While important in many applications, ranging from mining and exploration to search…