Pilot Study: A Visuotactile Haptic Primary Colors Sensor

Abstract

In this paper, we present our preliminary studies on how to make a unified skin-like visuotactile sensor capable of sensing haptic primary colors, namely: force, vibration, and temperature. Our sensor is based on GelSight technology that has proven its worth in the field of haptics, robotics, and computer vision. In our previous studies, we proposed switchable UltraViolet (UV) markers that can be turned on using UV light. These markers can be tracked using an optical flow algorithm to visualize forces related to gel deformation. In this study, we introduced layers of thermochromic pigments on the reflective layer, making our visuotactile sensor capable of sensing not only force and vibration inferred from gel deformation but can also sense the temperature of the contacted object by analyzing the change of hue in the reflective coating.