Abstract
Manipulation tasks often require robots to be continuously in contact with an object. Therefore tactile perception systems need to handle continuous contact data. Shear deformation causes the tactile sensor to output path-dependent readings in contrast to discrete contact readings. As such, in some continuous-contact tasks, sliding can be regarded as a disturbance over the sensor signal. Here we present a shear-invariant perception method based on principal component analysis (PCA) which outputs the required information about the environment despite sliding motion. A compliant tactile sensor (the TacTip) is used to investigate continuous tactile contact. First, we evaluate the method offline using test data collected whilst the sensor slides over an edge. Then, the method is used within a contour-following task applied to 6 objects with varying curvatures; all contours are successfully traced. The method demonstrates generalisation capabilities and could underlie a more sophisticated controller for challenging manipulation or exploration tasks in unstructured environments. A video showing the work described in the paper can be found at https://youtu.be/wrTM61-pieU
Abstract (translated)
操作任务通常需要机器人不断地与物体接触。因此，触觉感知系统需要处理连续的接触数据。剪切变形导致触觉传感器输出路径相关的读数，而不是离散的接触读数。因此，在某些连续接触任务中，滑动可被视为对传感器信号的干扰。本文提出了一种基于主成分分析（PCA）的剪切不变量感知方法，该方法可以输出滑动运动时所需的环境信息。一个兼容的触觉传感器（触觉）被用来研究连续的触觉接触。首先，我们利用传感器在边缘滑动时收集的测试数据离线评估该方法。然后，将该方法应用于6个不同曲率的物体的轮廓跟踪任务中，成功地跟踪了所有轮廓。该方法展示了通用化功能，并可能成为更复杂的控制器的基础，用于在非结构化环境中挑战操作或探索任务。可以在https://youtu.be/wrtm61-pieu上找到一段视频，显示论文中描述的工作。
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.00842
