Soft, Round, High Resolution Tactile Fingertip Sensors for Dexterous Robotic Manipulation

Understand

High resolution tactile sensors are often bulky and have shape profiles that make them awkward for use in manipulation.

• This becomes important when using such sensors as fingertips for dexterous multi-fingered hands, where boxy or planar fingertips limit the available set of smooth manipulation strategies.
• High resolution optical based sensors such as GelSight have until now been constrained to relatively flat geometries due to constraints on illumination geometry.Here, we show how to construct a rounded fingertip that utilizes a form of light piping for directional illumination.
• Our sensors can replace the standard rounded fingertips of the Allegro hand.They can capture high resolution maps of the contact surfaces,and can be used to support various dexterous manipulation tasks.