A Large Area Tactile Sensor Patch Based on Commercial Force Sensors

This paper reports the design of a tactile sensor patch to cover large areas of robots and machines that interact with human beings. Many devices have been proposed to meet such a demand. These realizations are mostly custom-built or developed in the lab. The sensor of this paper is implemented with commercial force sensors. This has the benefit of a more foreseeable response of the sensor if its behavior is understood as the aggregation of readings from all the individual force sensors in the array. A few reported large area tactile sensors are also based on commercial sensors. However, the one in this paper is the first of this kind based on the use of polymeric commercial force sensing resistors (FSR) as unit elements of the array or tactels, which results in a robust sensor. The paper discusses design issues related to some necessary modifications of the force sensor, its assembly in an array, and the signal conditioning. The patch has 16 × 9 force sensors mounted on a flexible printed circuit board with a spatial resolution of 18.5 mm. The force range of a tactel is 6 N and its sensitivity is 0.6 V/N. The array is read at a rate of 78 frames per second. Finally, two simple application examples are also carried out with the sensor mounted on the forearm of a rescue robot that communicates with the sensor through a CAN bus

Sensitive skins and somatic processing for affective and sociable robots based upon a somatic alphabet approach

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2005.Includes bibliographical references (p. 244-251).The sense of touch is one of the most important senses of the human body. This thesis describes the biologically inspired design of "sensitive skins" for two different robotic platforms: Leonardo, a high degree-of-freedom, sociable robot and the Huggable, a portable therapeutic robotic companion for relational, affective touch. The first step in the design of the "sensitive skin" for Leonardo: a set of hands featuring 40 force-sensing resistors (FSRs) and embedded processing was created. Somatosensory inspired algorithms for calculating the location, direction of motion, and orientation with a set of these sensors forms the first stage in the design of a "Virtual Somatosensory Cortex." A multi-modal (temperature, electric field sensors, and Quantum Tunneling Composite (QTC) based force sensors) three dimensional sensor array was created as the first step in the design of the "sensitive skin" for the Huggable. A soft silicone skin was placed over this array. Preliminary results using neural networks show that the affective content of touch can be determined. This work was sponsored in part by the NSF Center for Bits and Atoms Contract No.CCR-0122419, a Microsoft iCampus grant, and the MIT Media Lab Things That Think and Digital Life Consortia.by Walter Dan Stiehl.S.M

Development of the huggable social robot Probo: on the conceptual design and software architecture

This dissertation presents the development of a huggable social robot named Probo. Probo embodies a stuffed imaginary animal, providing a soft touch and a huggable appearance. Probo's purpose is to serve as a multidisciplinary research platform for human-robot interaction focused on children. In terms of a social robot, Probo is classified as a social interface supporting non-verbal communication. Probo's social skills are thereby limited to a reactive level. To close the gap with higher levels of interaction, an innovative system for shared control with a human operator is introduced. The software architecture de nes a modular structure to incorporate all systems into a single control center. This control center is accompanied with a 3D virtual model of Probo, simulating all motions of the robot and providing a visual feedback to the operator. Additionally, the model allows us to advance on user-testing and evaluation of newly designed systems. The robot reacts on basic input stimuli that it perceives during interaction. The input stimuli, that can be referred to as low-level perceptions, are derived from vision analysis, audio analysis, touch analysis and object identification. The stimuli will influence the attention and homeostatic system, used to de ne the robot's point of attention, current emotional state and corresponding facial expression. The recognition of these facial expressions has been evaluated in various user-studies. To evaluate the collaboration of the software components, a social interactive game for children, Probogotchi, has been developed. To facilitate interaction with children, Probo has an identity and corresponding history. Safety is ensured through Probo's soft embodiment and intrinsic safe actuation systems. To convey the illusion of life in a robotic creature, tools for the creation and management of motion sequences are put into the hands of the operator. All motions generated from operator triggered systems are combined with the motions originating from the autonomous reactive systems. The resulting motion is subsequently smoothened and transmitted to the actuation systems. With future applications to come, Probo is an ideal platform to create a friendly companion for hospitalised children

Cognitive assisted living ambient system: a survey

The demographic change towards an aging population is creating a significant impact and introducing drastic challenges to our society. We therefore need to find ways to assist older people to stay independently and prevent social isolation of these population. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) provide various solutions to help older adults to improve their quality of life, stay healthier, and live independently for a time. Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) is a field to investigate innovative technologies to provide assistance as well as healthcare and rehabilitation to impaired seniors. The paper provides a review of research background and technologies of AAL

Detector prototipo basado en un campo eléctrico

El presente artículo describe el diseño y construcción de un sistema prototipo de detección de objetos en movimiento que perturban el campo eléctrico uniforme generado en un volumen definido. Para ello se diseñó un circuito capaz de detectar movimiento incluso a través de un muro de ladrillo de 0.15m de espesor. Se encontró que a pesar de la excelente sensibilidad de los electrodos a cualquier cambio de posición de un objeto que entra o sale del campo, se debe contar con por lo menos otro electrodo que sirva como referencia. Los resultados de las pruebas indicaron una alta sensibilidad del sistema a movimientos de diferentes objetos. Igualmente se determinó, que tanto la geometría como el tamaño relativo de los electrodos afectan la sensibilidad del equipo para detectar movimientos muy lentos

Personal, Expressive Avatar Controller for the operation of virtual characters

Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2010.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 45-46).The purpose of this thesis was to design and construct a prototype for the control of virtual avatars in a virtual space. It was designed with the intent to feature multiple interfaces such that the user would have many options to control a virtual character. The design was to have kinematic interactions (changing the physical pose of the interface), proximal touch (enabled by capacitive sensing), whole-body movement (enabled by an internal measurement unit), touch pressure (enabled by QTC film), and finger-tip gesture (enabled by a touch screen). After many iterations of a mock prototype, a test was created to determine whether certain affordances of the controller would be used in controlling a virtual character. The mock prototype featured objects that represented the proposed technology for the controller. Participants in the test viewed example animations from two different virtual worlds, and were asked to emulate the actions and emotions shown on the screen. They also rated the controller on the different actions and emotions on a seven point Likert scale for comfort and intuitiveness. It seemed that having a figurine that could pose into the positions for actions and emotions was very helpful and was received well from the ten participants. The other technologies were not used as much, and so the results of this study will assist in redesigning the controller to affectively utilize the given technologies.by Kristopher B. Dos Santos.S.B

Human-Robot Collaborations in Industrial Automation

Technology is changing the manufacturing world. For example, sensors are being used to track inventories from the manufacturing floor up to a retail shelf or a customer’s door. These types of interconnected systems have been called the fourth industrial revolution, also known as Industry 4.0, and are projected to lower manufacturing costs. As industry moves toward these integrated technologies and lower costs, engineers will need to connect these systems via the Internet of Things (IoT). These engineers will also need to design how these connected systems interact with humans. The focus of this Special Issue is the smart sensors used in these human–robot collaborations

Sensitive Skin for Robotics

This thesis explores two novel ways of reducing the data complexity of tactile sensing. The thesis begins by examining the state-of-the art in tactile sensing, not only examining the sensor construction and interpretation of data but also the motivation for these designs. The thesis then proposes two methods for reducing the complexity of data in tactile sensing. The first is a low-power tactile sensing array exploiting a novel application of a pressure-sensitive material called quantum tunnelling composite. The properties of this material in this array form are shown to be beneficial in robotics. The electrical characteristics of the material are also explored. A bit-based structure for representing tactile data called Bitworld is then defined and its computational performance is characterised. It is shown that this bit-based structure outperforms floating-point arrays by orders of magnitude. This structure is then shown to allow high-resolution images to be produced by combining low resolution sensor arrays with equivalent functional performance to a floating-point array, but with the advantages of computational efficiency. Finally, an investigation into making Bitworld robust in the presence of positional noise is described with simulations to verify that such robustness can be achieved. Overall, the sensor and data structure described in this thesis allow simple, but effective tactile systems to be deployed in robotics without requiring a significant commitment of computational or power resources on the part of a robot designer.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo