Color-Coded Fiber-Optic Tactile Sensor for an Elastomeric Robot Skin

The sense of touch is essential for reliable mapping between the environment and a robot which interacts physically with objects. Presumably, an artificial tactile skin would facilitate safe interaction of the robots with the environment. In this work, we present our color-coded tactile sensor, incorporating plastic optical fibers (POF), transparent silicone rubber and an off-the-shelf color camera. Processing electronics are placed away from the sensing surface to make the sensor robust to harsh environments. Contact localization is possible thanks to the lower number of light sources compared to the number of camera POFs. Classical machine learning techniques and a hierarchical classification scheme were used for contact localization. Specifically, we generated the mapping from stimulation to sensation of a robotic perception system using our sensor. We achieved a force sensing range up to 18 N with the force resolution of around 3.6~N and the spatial resolution of 8~mm. The color-coded tactile sensor is suitable for tactile exploration and might enable further innovations in robust tactile sensing.Comment: Presented at ICRA2019, Montrea

感度調整可能な3軸マルチモーダルスキンセンサーモジュールの開発

早大学位記番号:新8538早稲田大

Impact of end effector technology on telemanipulation performance

Generic requirements for end effector design are briefly summarized as derived from generic functional and operational requirements. Included is a brief summary of terms and definitions related to end effector technology. The second part contains a brief overview of end effector technology work as JPL during the past ten years, with emphasis on the evolution of new mechanical, sensing and control capabilities of end effectors. The third and major part is devoted to the description of current end effector technology. The ongoing work addresses mechanical, sensing and control details with emphasis on mechanical ruggedness, increased resolution in sensing, and close electronic and control integration with overall telemanipulator control system

GRAINS: Proximity Sensing of Objects in Granular Materials

Proximity sensing detects an object's presence without contact. However, research has rarely explored proximity sensing in granular materials (GM) due to GM's lack of visual and complex properties. In this paper, we propose a granular-material-embedded autonomous proximity sensing system (GRAINS) based on three granular phenomena (fluidization, jamming, and failure wedge zone). GRAINS can automatically sense buried objects beneath GM in real-time manner (at least ~20 hertz) and perceive them 0.5 ~ 7 centimeters ahead in different granules without the use of vision or touch. We introduce a new spiral trajectory for the probe raking in GM, combining linear and circular motions, inspired by a common granular fluidization technique. Based on the observation of force-raising when granular jamming occurs in the failure wedge zone in front of the probe during its raking, we employ Gaussian process regression to constantly learn and predict the force patterns and detect the force anomaly resulting from granular jamming to identify the proximity sensing of buried objects. Finally, we apply GRAINS to a Bayesian-optimization-algorithm-guided exploration strategy to successfully localize underground objects and outline their distribution using proximity sensing without contact or digging. This work offers a simple yet reliable method with potential for safe operation in building habitation infrastructure on an alien planet without human intervention.Comment: 35 pages, 5 figures,2 tables. Videos available at https://sites.google.com/view/grains2/hom

Octopus-inspired adhesive skins for intelligent and rapidly switchable underwater adhesion

The octopus couples controllable adhesives with intricately embedded sensing, processing, and control to manipulate underwater objects. Current synthetic adhesive–based manipulators are typically manually operated without sensing or control and can be slow to activate and release adhesion, which limits system-level manipulation. Here, we couple switchable, octopus-inspired adhesives with embedded sensing, processing, and control for robust underwater manipulation. Adhesion strength is switched over 450× from the ON to OFF state in \u3c50 ms over many cycles with an actively controlled membrane. Systematic design of adhesive geometry enables adherence to nonideal surfaces with low preload and independent control of adhesive strength and adhesive toughness for strong and reliable attachment and easy release. Our bio-inspired nervous system detects objects and autonomously triggers the switchable adhesives. This is implemented into a wearable glove where an array of adhesives and sensors creates a biomimetic adhesive skin to manipulate diverse underwater objects

Highly Sensitive Soft Foam Sensors for Wearable Applications

Due to people’s increasing desire for body health monitoring, the needs of knowing humans’ body parameters and transferring them to analyzable and understandable signals become increasingly attractive and significant. The present body-sign measurement devices are still bulky medical devices used in settings such as clinics or hospitals, which are accurate, but expensive and cannot achieve the personalization of usage targets and the monitoring of real-time body parameters. Many commercial wearable devices can provide some of the body indexes, such as the smartwatch providing the pulse/heartbeat information, but cannot give accurate and reliable data, and the data could be influenced by the user’s movement and the loose wearing habit, either. In this way, developing next-generation wearable devices combining good wearable experience and accuracy is gathering increasing attention. The aim of this study is to develop a high-performance pressure/strain sensor with the requirements of comfortable to wear, and having great electromechanical behaviour to convert the physiological signal to an analyzable signal