Probing the curvature of a convex object via discrete active touch

Abstract

In this paper we propose a method of probing the local curvature of a three-dimensional (3D) convex object using the force and torque information which is obtained from the discrete active touch with a robot finger. A scheme for estimating two-dimensional (2D) curvature of a convex object is introduced and the way of extracting 3D curvatures from 2D curvatures is presented. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, numerical simulations have been performed and experiments have also been carried out with an experimental system consisting of a finger.