Exploiting Distributed Tactile Sensors to Drive a Robot Arm Through Obstacles

Tactile sensors for robot handling

Development of soft and distributed tactile sensors and the application to a humanoid robot

This paper describes a comprehensive tactile sensor systemwhich can cover wide areas of full-body robots. Based on design criteria which are introduced from requirements, we develop two types of tactile sensor elements. One is a multi-valued touch sensor which has multi-level pressure thresholds. It is capable of coveringwide areas of robot surfaces. The other is made of soft, conductive gel, w...

Robot arm control exploiting natural dynamics

This thesis presents an approach to robot arm control exploiting natural dynamics. The approach consists of using a compliant arm whose joints are controlled with simple non-linear oscillators. The arm has special actuators which makes it robust to collisions and gives it a smooth compliant motion. The oscillators produce rhythmic commands of the joints of the arm, and feedback of the joint mot...

Distributed Digital Control of a Robot Arm

Most robot arms use a central control box that contains the power electronics, .. the motor controllers and the coordinating computer. This paper presents a distributed control network that allows the power electronics and motor controllers to be placed adjacent to the motors. Each controller uses a DSP for all motor control w~th the individual controllers communicating wIth each other and a ho...

Tactile Sensors and Other Distributed Sensors with Minimal Wiring Complexity

This paper describes a tactile sensor design, allowing data acquisition from a sensor array using a single wire. The sensor is implemented as a filter. Sensor excitation changes filter characteristics, and the pressure profile can be recovered from the filter’s impulse response. The method is also applicable to sensor arrays for other scalar fields than pressure, such as heat, proximity, or rad...