Tactile Sensing by the Sole of the Foot Part II: Calibration and Real-time Processing

Abstract

This paper introduces prototype experimental apparatus and the calibration and real-time signal processing required to investigate stability in standing, walking and running of humanoid robots using pressure sensing at the sole-of-the-foot contact. The system can provide very good spatial or temporal resolution and these can be traded off against each other dynamically to accommodate the instantaneous requirement, for example, sparsely sampling the whole sole during static balancing vs. densely sampling the impact region during walking or running. Dynamic variation in sampling policy during different phases of the gait is foreseen so as to optimise utilisation of the total sampling bandwidth available. Periodic signals like walking and running would be sampled repetitively, achieving by accumulation both high spatial and high temporal resolution.