2024/12/01 by Carson Kohlbrenner, Caleb Escobedo, Kohlbrenner, Carson +5
Neuroscience · Engineering · #Tactile and Sensory Interactions #Advanced Sensor and Energy Harvesting Materials #Modular Robots and Swarm Intelligence
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2412.00672
Tactile sensing is used in robotics to obtain real-time feedback during physical interactions. Fine object manipulation is a robotic application that benefits from a high density of sensors to accurately estimate object pose, whereas a low sensing resolution is sufficient for collision detection. Introducing variable sensing resolution into a single tactile sensing array can increase the range of tactile use cases, but also invokes challenges in localizing internal sensor positions. In this work, we present a mutual capacitance sensor array with variable sensor density, VARSkin, along with a localization method that determines the position of each sensor in the non-uniform array. When tested on two distinct artificial skin patches with concealed sensor layouts, our method achieves a localization accuracy within ± 2mm. We also provide a comprehensive error analysis, offering strategies for further precision improvement.