A Soft Robotic Cover with Dual Thermal Display and Sensing Capabilities

Osawa, Yukiko; Kheddar, Abderrahmane

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-71151-1_23

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…The built-in pipes allow heat transfer from the water circulating inside the shell to the robot surface through the outer layer. This solution permits higher performance and lower fabrication costs with respect to embedding separate pipes, as in our preliminary trials [43]. Because separate pipes add an additional layer to heat transfer and make the surface harder, we challenged not using pipes as a separate component.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soft robotic shell with active thermal display

Osawa¹,

Kinbara²,

Kageoka³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Almost all robotic systems in use have hard shells, which is limiting in many ways their full potential of physical interaction with humans or their surrounding environment. Robots with soft-shell covers offer an alternative morphology which is more pleasant in both appearance and for haptic human interaction. A persisting challenge in such soft-shell robotic covers is the simultaneous realization of softness and heat-conducting properties. Such heat-conducting properties are important for enabling temperature-control of robotic covers in the range that is comfortable for human touch. The presented softshell robotic cover is composed of a linked two-layer structure: (i) the inner layer, with built-in pipes for water circulation, is soft and acts as a thermal-isolation layer between the cover and the robot structure, whereas (ii) the outer layer, which can be patterned with a given desired texture and color, allows heat transfer from the circulating water of the inner part to the surface. Moreover, we demonstrate the ability to integrate our prototype cover with a humanoid robot equipped with capacitance sensors. This fabrication technique enables robotic cover possibilities, including tunable color, surface texture, and size, that are likely to have applications in a variety of robotic systems.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soft robotic shell with active thermal display

Osawa¹,

Kinbara²,

Kageoka³

et al. 2021

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…2. The basic design borrows from our previous work [23], [24]. An electric pipe made of Nickel graphite is embedded in a silicone foam, and a thermocouple is attached to the pipe.…”

Section: Thermal Contact Interaction Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We tackle this shortcoming using an active temperature control system integrated to the robot gripper. This is made thanks to the temperature-controllable robotic cover [23], [24]. Note that our proposed method also aims to be applied to human contact recognition in future work; the surface temperature needs to be regulated according to a human body temperature.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Material Classification Using Active Temperature Controllable Robotic Gripper

Osawa

Kase

Domae

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Recognition techniques allow robots to make proper planning and control strategies to manipulate various objects. Object recognition is more reliable when made by combining several percepts, e.g., vision and haptics. One of the distinguishing features of each object's material is its heat properties, and classification can exploit heat transfer, similarly to human thermal sensation. Thermal-based recognition has the advantage of obtaining contact surface information in realtime by simply capturing temperature change using a tiny and cheap sensor. However, heat transfer between a robot surface and a contact object is strongly affected by the initial temperature and environmental conditions. A given object's material cannot be recognized when its temperature is the same as the robotic grippertip. We present a material classification system using active temperature controllable robotic gripper to induce heat flow. Subsequently, our system can recognize materials independently from their ambient temperature. The robotic gripper surface can be regulated to any temperature that differentiates it from the touched object's surface. We conducted some experiments by integrating the temperature control system with the Academic SCARA Robot, classifying them based on a long short-term memory (LSTM) using temperature data obtained from grasping target objects.

show abstract

Soft robotic shell with active thermal display

Osawa

Kinbara

Kageoka

et al. 2021

Sci Rep

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Almost all robotic systems in use have hard shells, which is limiting in many ways their full potential of physical interaction with humans or their surrounding environment. Robots with soft-shell covers offer an alternative morphology which is more pleasant in both appearance and for haptic human interaction. A persisting challenge in such soft-shell robotic covers is the simultaneous realization of softness and heat-conducting properties. Such heat-conducting properties are important for enabling temperature-control of robotic covers in the range that is comfortable for human touch. The presented soft-shell robotic cover is composed of a linked two-layer structure: (1) The inner layer, with built-in pipes for water circulation, is soft and acts as a thermal-isolation layer between the cover and the robot structure, whereas (2) the outer layer, which can be patterned with a given desired texture and color, allows heat transfer from the circulating water of the inner part to the surface. Moreover, we demonstrate the ability to integrate our prototype cover with a humanoid robot equipped with capacitance sensors. This fabrication technique enables robotic cover possibilities, including tunable color, surface texture, and size, that are likely to have applications in a variety of robotic systems.

show abstract

A Soft Robotic Cover with Dual Thermal Display and Sensing Capabilities

Cited by 8 publications

References 14 publications

Soft robotic shell with active thermal display

Soft robotic shell with active thermal display

Material Classification Using Active Temperature Controllable Robotic Gripper

Soft robotic shell with active thermal display

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