In this paper we discuss the role of tactile sensors in robotic manipulatory systems and present a number of techniques useful in processing tactile information acquired using passive as well as active sensing modes. Successful adaptation of touch in robotic manipulatory systems entails in both enhancing the tactile sensor technology, and developing techniques for efficient and accurate analysis of the tactile information. This paper attempts to emphasize the importance of adopting active tactile sensing scheme as against restricting to passive tactile sensing scheme. In an endeavor to demonstrate the utility of tactual perception for robotic systems, several experiments were carried out on tactile images of objects smaller as well as larger than the sensor size. The experimental results bring out the advantages of employing passive and active tactile sensing techniques to accomplish robotic manipulatory tasks. Further, based on the experimental results it becomes quite apparent that the use of Fourier descriptors over the use of complex moment invariants as shape descriptors is more advantageous for object recognition tasks using passively acquired images. A new least-square cross-correlation technique for generating composite images acquired through active exploration of objects larger than the sensor is also proposed. The implementation results clearly show that an ad hoc technique for generating composite images introduces more error than the technique proposed in this paper.Objects larger than a tactile sensor can he recognized or identified by exploring their entire surface. Although, by having an object model library, objects can be uniquely identified by acquiring tactile images SPIE Vol. 12.93 Applications ofArtificial Intelligence VIII (1990) / 793 Downloaded From: http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org/ on 06/27/2016 Terms of Use: http://spiedigitallibrary.org/ss/TermsOfUse.aspx
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