Exoskeleton-covered soft finger with vision-based proprioception and tactile sensing

Understand

Soft robots offer significant advantages in adaptability, safety, and dexterity compared to conventional rigid-body robots.

• However, it is challenging to equip soft robots with accurate proprioception and tactile sensing due to their high flexibility and elasticity.
• In this work, we describe the development of a vision-based proprioceptive and tactile sensor for soft robots called GelFlex, which is inspired by previous GelSight sensing techniques.
• More specifically, we develop a novel exoskeleton-covered soft finger with embedded cameras and deep learning methods that enable high-resolution proprioceptive sensing and rich tactile sensing.