Shape-Changing Soft Robotic Skin with Vision-based Tactile Sensing for Human-Robot Interaction

Abstract

Recent developments of vision-based tactile sensors primarily focus on small-sized and fixed-structured robot bodies, while the application of this sensing technique for whole-body, shape-changing robots remains a challenge. To address this problem, this study introduces a soft, changeable structured robot with integrated whole-body tactile sensing. The proposed robot system features a compact mechanism for adjusting the robot’s height, and a camera system for vision-based tactile sensing, which are collectively covered by a marker-embedded soft robot skin. Additionally, a data-driven tactile sensing approach is developed to enable the robot to detect contacts across the entire robot body with varying heights. The preliminary results and showcases demonstrate the promise of the proposed system in facilitating robot operations in unstructured environments and enhancing human-robot interaction scenarios.