Sensing surface shape by touch

Abstract

The design and construction of a tactile sensor that has been developed to measure the surface shape of objects held between the fingers of a robot gripper are described. A robotic tactile sensory workcell has been assembled to investigate touch-mediated grasping and object manipulation. This system requires sensors to provide surface profile information for experiments involving object manipulation and shape determination. A piezoresistive tactile sensor originally developed for the workcell proved to be generally unsuitable because its stiff sensing surface gave little surface shape information. A solution was provided by a tactile sensor designed to have a compliant structure.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>