Towards automated self-calibration of robot skin

Cannata, Giorgio; Denei, Simone; Mastrogiovanni, Fulvio

doi:10.1109/robot.2010.5509370

Cited by 34 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…One approach in simulation is spatio-temporal correlation, learning topographic sensor structures from more or less random input [1]. Other simulated systems purposively seek contact with known external objects [2] or known body parts [3] to probe the sensor locations. In [4] topographic structures are used to classify interactive scenarios, like hugging or hand-shaking of human with a real robot, but the system gains no information about its motor-space.…”

Section: A Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self-organizing sensory-motor map for low-level touch reactions

Mittendorfer

Cheng

2011

2011 11th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots

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Abstract-In this paper, we present a new method to automatically transfer touch stimulation into controllable, reflex reactions for articulated robots -such as a humanoid robot. Our work has been motivated by the necessity to automate the reaction setup for an increasing number of our multimodal artificial sensor skin units (HEX-O-SKIN). Our method therefore evaluates the effect of isolated, sinusoidal degree of freedom (DoF) movements, around a current pose of the robot, towards the motion of each sensor unit. We do this by exploiting data from a 3-axis accelerometer -one of the multiple modalities located on every of our sensor units (SU). Direction and amplitude from all three axes enable us to generate signed weights, one per DoF and SU, leading to the partial construction of a sensory-motor map. In this paper, we focus on reactions towards lateral sensory modalitiessuch as a distance sensor. A higher acceleration along the surface normal thus leads to a higher lateral weight, while unwanted sideway movements decrease it. We then define a reaction controller at the level of each sensor unit. The sensorymotor map is used to map these local reactions, from units distributed all over the robot, into the robot's motor space. Through activation, inhibition or inversion it is possible to adapt these low-level controller instances to a given context. Here, we show experiments with a KUKA lightweight robotic arm reacting evasively or aggressively towards contact with a lateral distance sensor, emulating the sensation of light touch. In comparison to other related works, our method does not suffer from occlusion, complex touch situations or long calibration time.

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Section: A Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self-organizing sensory-motor map for low-level touch reactions

Mittendorfer

Cheng

2011

2011 11th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots

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“…The single tactile element (i.e., a taxel) is associated with two pieces of information, namely the sensed information and its position with respect to robot or workspace centred reference frames [9]. Taxels exploit specific transduction principles converting physical quantities, such as pressure [5], [3], strain and temperature in electrical signals.…”

Section: A Sensor-module-patch-region: a Terminology For Largescale mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the contrary, the tactile image can be hardly structured [9], [10] in a regular arrangement. • Since robot motion commands can lead to robot postures in contact with the surrounding environment, the actual tactile image depends on the particular robot-environment configuration [11].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A middleware for whole body skin-like tactile systems

Youssefi

Denei

Mastrogiovanni

et al. 2011

2011 11th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots

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In this article a software architecture for acquiring, processing and presenting distributed tactile information in realtime is discussed. When humanoid robots are endowed with largescale tactile systems, the need arises to design a framework able to abstract from the underlying robot hardware structure. The article describes relevant functional requirements, architectural choices and specific technical solutions. Experiments show results with respect to a realistic use case, i.e., a humanoid robot fully covered with artificial skin.

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“…In current literature numerous approaches towards sensitive whole-body covers for robotic systems are presented, e.g. [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16]. The majority of these approaches are presented in form of laboratory prototypes in various stages of integration.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The DLR artificial skin step II: Scalability as a prerequisite for whole-body covers

Strohmayr

Schneider

2013

2013 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems

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In human skin, the ability to spatially discriminate an individual indentation from two simultaneous indentations is tailored to the need of the specific area of application on the human body. While the spatial resolution is comparatively low over wide areas of the human body, there are no insensitive spots. In addition, the measuring range is tuned to the expected loads on the respective part of the human body. Within this study these observations are utilized to solve some of the key challenges on the way towards an artificial skin as a whole-body cover for robotic systems. To enable the reliable detection of collision events which are commonly of very short duration the reaction time of the artificial skin system has to be minimized. In order to do so, the goal conflict between the required number of taxels and the required high readout frequencies has to be solved. We present the DLR approach towards scalable transduction hardware and readout electronics as a basis for the acquisition of tactile information from future whole-body covers. First experiments with prototypes of the DLR Artificial Skin demonstrate the scalability of the transduction hardware with respect to size, spatial resolution and measuring range.

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Towards automated self-calibration of robot skin

Cited by 34 publications

References 13 publications

Self-organizing sensory-motor map for low-level touch reactions

Self-organizing sensory-motor map for low-level touch reactions

A middleware for whole body skin-like tactile systems

The DLR artificial skin step II: Scalability as a prerequisite for whole-body covers

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