Voronoi Features for Tactile Sensing: Direct Inference of Pressure, Shear, and Contact Locations

• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.1805.07868
• Publication Date: 2018-01-01
• Authors: Luke Cramphorn; John Lloyd; Nathan F. Lepora
• Keywords: Tactile sensor

There are a wide range of features that tactile contact provides, each with different aspects information can be used for object grasping, manipulation, and perception. In this paper inference some key features, tip displacement, location, shear direction magnitude, is demonstrated by introducing novel method transducing third dimension to the sensor data via Voronoi tessellation. The inferred displayed throughout work in new visualisation mode derived from tessellation; these visualisations create easier interpretation an optical measures local displacement internal pins (the TacTip). output values magnitude calibrated appropriate mechanical units validate sensor. We show methods infer $\sim$2.3$^{\circ}$ without need training classifier or regressor. approach here will increase versatility generality sensors thus allow more unstructured unknown environments, as well improve use complex systems such robot hands.