Soft Tactile Contour Following for Robot-Assisted Wiping and Bathing

Abstract

The automated cleaning of surfaces such as furniture, bathroom sinks, and even human bodies is challenging due to the three-dimensional nature of their geometries. Yet, enabling robots to effectively and safely perform these tasks would not only reduce user efforts spent on household cleaning chores, but would also alleviate the strenuous workload of caretakers as the elderly population continues to grow at an unprecedented rate. In this work, we unify the applications of wiping objects and bathing humans as a general contour-following problem. To this end, we utilize a depth camera-based soft tactile sensor to extract the contact geometries and force-correlated measures during interaction between the robot and the target object or body part, and design a general contour-following controller that not only maintains contact with the target throughout the cleaning process, but also regulates the amount of force applied. Our system enables successful cleaning of pipes, shelving, and even human limbs and torsos without the need for data-driven methods such as deep learning, upon which the majority of existing works have relied.