Sensors provide robotic systems with the information required to perceive the changes that happen in unstructured environments and modify their actions accordingly. The robotic controllers which process and analyze this sensory information are usually based on three types of sensors (visual, force/torque and tactile) which identify the most widespread robotic control strategies: visual servoing...

The ability to combine tactile, on-the-skin, sensory cues with the kinesthetic ones that widely available force-feedback devices are able to produce is a desirable one, opening the door to the production of more realistic, compelling virtual environments. Pneumatic air-jet displays can be easily mounted on existing force-feedback devices and we believe have the potential to provide useful compl...

With the increasing complexity of robotic missions and the development towards long-term autonomous systems, the need for multi-modal sensing of the environment increases. Until now, the use of tactile sensor systems has been mostly based on sensing one modality of forces in the robotic end-effector. The use of a multi-modal tactile sensory system is motivated, which combines static and dynamic...

The ability to grasp objects of different size and shape is one of the most important skills of a humanoid robot. Human grasping integrates a lot of different senses. In particular, the tactile sensing is very important for a stable grasping motion. When we lift a box without knowing what is inside, we do it carefully using our tactile and proprioceptive senses to estimate the weight and thus, ...

Grasping in an uncertain environment is a topic of great interest in robotics. In this paper we focus on the challenge of object handover capable of coping with a wide range of different and unspecified objects. Handover is the action of object passing an object from one agent to another. In this work handover is performed from human to robot. We present a robust method that relies only on the ...

Carrying out an autonomous object prehension task, needs some active interaction with the environment, which only could be done with sensory integration on the robot tools. A study of the contact force control performed with tactile feedback in a low cost servo-controlled parallel jaw gripper is presented in this article. This gripper integrates matricial tactile sensors and proximity sensors. ...

Relaying spatially distributed forces promises to enhance the performance of telemanipulation systems. However, the proper way to render tactile information from the sensor to the display is not clear for current displays, where the user applies a constant contact force. We present a simple approach to rendering tactile information to improve performance in a lump localization task in a complia...

This paper describes a concept and presents the experimental results for robotic end-effector operation for handling product items that are flexible or variable in physical properties such as size, shape or firmness and also describes a scheme by which a manipulator can use dynamic tactile sensing to detect when it is about to lose hold of a grasped object and take preventive measures before gr...

Tactile perception is a feature benefiting reliable grasping and manipulation. This paper presents the design of an integrated fingertip force sensor employing an optical fiber based approach where applied forces modulate light intensity. The proposed sensor system is developed to support grasping of a broad range of objects, including those that are hard as well those that are soft. The sensor...

A soft tactile sensor able to detect both normal and tangential forces is fabricated with a simple method using conductive textile. Owing to the multi-layered architecture, the capacitive-based tactile sensor is highly sensitive (less than 10 mg and 8 μm, for minimal detectable weight and displacement, respectively) within a wide normal force range (potentially up to 27 N (400 kPa)) and natural...