Perception and Data

Tactile sensing for robots

We create novel technologies and signal processing methods for tactile sensors which provide robots with a sense of touch including force and tactile sensing. In particular, we have designed and built tactile sensors based on optical and magnetic transducers.

Academics: Kaspar Althoefer, Lorenzo Jamone, Ildar Farkhatdinov, Stefan Poslad

Relevant publications:

• Palermo F, Konstantinova J, Poslad S, Althoefer K, Farkhatdinov I. Implementing Tactile and Proximity Sensing for Crack Detection. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2020. PDF
• Jamone L, Natale L, Metta G, Sandini G. Highly sensitive soft tactile sensors for an anthropomorphic robotic hand. IEEE sensors Journal. 2015 Mar 27;15(8):4226-33. PDF
• Sareh S, Jiang A, Faragasso A, Noh Y, Nanayakkara T, Dasgupta P, Seneviratne LD, Wurdemann HA, Althoefer K. Bio-inspired tactile sensor sleeve for surgical soft manipulators. In 2014 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2014 May 31 (pp. 1454-1459). IEEE. PDF

Human and robot perception

We use robotics to study human senses and sensorimotor system to develop better robots and human-machine interaction methods. For example, we study human sense of touch to develop robotic interfaces to improve immersiveness of virtual reality application, or we study human vision system to develop more efficient robotic vision.

Academics: Lorenzo Jamone, Ildar Farkhatdinov, Miles Hansard, Isabelle Mareschal