Abstract
Robots are now employed in a large numbers of industrial and research applications, such as mechanical parts assembly, dangerous experiments, teleoperation and manipulation of objects in far-off or unaccessible locations (space or underwater environments). However, only few of them are equipped with artificial sensory systems which allow them to be aware of the external world and, thus, to autonomously operate in unknown environments. For those robots which have sensing capabilities, the sensory input is primarily visual, because the visual channel provides the most information about the environment and visual sensing technology is quite well developed. However, vision does not give to a robot any information on the grip force when it is handling an object, neither on the compliance of the object. As a consequence the robot lacks of an essential sensory capability for object handling and dexterous manipulation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
H.R. Nicholls and M.R. Lee, A survey of robot tactile sensing technology, Int. J. Robotics Res., 8, 3, 3–30, (1989).
D. De Rossi, Artificial tactile sensing and haptic perception, Meas. Sci. Technol., 2, 1003–1016, (1992).
A. Pugh (ed.), Robot sensors vol. 2: Tactile and non vision, Kemston, UK, IFS, (1986).
J.G. Webster, Tactile Sensors for Robotics and Medicine, Wiley, New York, (1988).
H.R. Nicholls, Advanced Tactile Sensing for Robotics, World Scientific, Singapore, (1992).
R. Bajcsy, Shape from touch, in: Advances in Automation and Robotics, G.N. Saridis ed., JAI Press Inc, London, (1985).
N. Sato, W.B. Heginbotham, A. Pugh, A method for three-dimensional part identification by tactile transducer, in: Robot sensors vol. 2: Tactile and non-vision, A. Pugh ed., Kempston, UK, (1986).
R.A. Russel, Tactile sensing of 3-dimensional surface features, Robotica, 8(2), 111–115, (1990).
G. Magenes and F. Germagnoli, An artificial system emulating human strategies in tactile exploration, Materials Science and Engineering, C1. Biomimetic Materials, Sensors and Systems, Elsevier, Lausanne, Switz, in press (1997).
D. De Rossi, G. Canepa, G. Magenes, F. Germagnoli, A. Caiti, and T. Parisini, Skin-like tactile sensor array for contact stress field extraction, Materials Science and Engineering, C1. Biomimetic Materials, Sensors and Systems, Elsevier, Lausanne, Switz., vol. 1, n.l, 23–36, (1993).
H.A. Caiti, G. Canepa, D. De Rossi, F. Germagnoli, G. Magenes, T. Parisini, Towards the realization of an artificial tactile system: fine-form discrimnation by a tensorial tactile sensor array and neural inversion algorithms. IEEE Trans. System, Man, and Cyber., vol. 25, pp. 933–46, (199
R.S. Fearing and T.O. Binford, Using a cylindrical tactile sensor for determining curvature, IEEE Trans. Robotics and Automation, vol. 7, 6, 806–817, (1991).
K.L. Johnson, Contact Mechanics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, (1987).
R.D. Howe and M.R. Cutkosky, Sensing skin acceleration for texture and slip perception, Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Robotics and Automation, Scottsdale, Arizona, 145–150, (1990).
T. Manzoni, Anatomy and physiology of somatosensory processing, in: Human and Machine Perception: Information Fusion, Plenum Press (1997).
F. Germagnoli, S. Lazzari, R. Lombardi, G. Magenes, An artificial tactile sensor for fine-form discrimination, Proc. XVII Int. Conf. IEEE-EMBS, Montreal, Canada, (1995).
M.R. Tremblay and M.R. Cutkosky, Estimating friction using incipient slip sensing during a manipulation task, Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Robotics and Automation, 429–434, (1993).
P. Colli Franzone, F. Germagnoli, L. Guerri, G. Magenes, Numerical simulation of stress inside a skin-like tactile sensor. Proc. VI Mediterranean Conference on Medical and Biological Engineering MEDICON’ 92, Capri, vol. I, 247–250 (1992).
Y.C. Pati, P.S. Krishnaprasad, and M.C. Peckerar, An analog neural network solution to the inverse problem of early taction., IEEE Trans, on Robotics and Automation, vol. 8, 2, 196, (1992).
J.R. Phillips and K.O. Johnson, Tactile spatial resolution III. A continuum mechanics model of skin predicting mechanoreceptor responses to bars, edges and gratings. J. Neurophysiol. 46, 1204, (1981).
R.S. Johansson and A.B. Vallbo, Sensory function of the skin primates., Pergamon Press, Oxford, England, (1986).
R.S. Johansson and A.B. Vallbo, Tactile sensory coding in the glabrous skin of the human hand, Trends in Neuroscience 27, (1983).
J.L. Loomis and S.J. Ledermann, Tactual perception, in: Handbook of Perception and Human Performance vol 2, K. Boff et al., eds., 1–41, Wiley, New York, (1986).
K.J. Overton, The acquisition, processing and use of tactile sensor data in robot control, Tech. rept. COINS 84-08, Dept. Computer and Information Science, Univ. Massachusset, (1984).
L.D. Harmon, Automated tactile sensing, Int. J. Robotics Res., 1 (2), 38–46, (1982).
M.H. Lee, Intelligent Robotics, Chapmann Hall, London, (1989).
W.E. Snyder and J. St Clair, Conductive elastomes as a sensor for industrial parts handling equipment, IEEE Trans. Instrumentation and Measurements, IM-27 (1), 94–99, (1978).
T.H. Speteer, Flexible piezoresistive touch sensing array, Proc. SPIE — Int. Soc. Opt. Eng., Cambridge, MA, 1005, 31–43,(1989).
R.S. Fearing, Tactile sensing mechanisms, Int. J. Robotics Res., 9 (3), 3–23, (1990).
S. Begej, Palnar and fingr-shaped optical tactile sensors for robotic applications, IEEE J. robotics and automation, 4 (5), 472–484, (1988).
P. Dario, C. Domenici, C. Bardelli, D. De Rossi and P.C. Pinotti, Piezoelectric polymers: new sensor materials for robotic applications, Proc. 13 Int. Symp. Industrial Robots, 1434, (1983).
P. Dario and D. De Rossi, Tactile sensors and the gripping challenge, IEEE Spectrum, 22, 8, 46–52, (1985).
D. De Rossi, A. Nannini., and C. Domenici, Biomimetic tactile sensor with stress-component discrimination capability. J. Mol. Electron. 3, 173–81, (1987).
C. Domenici, D. De Rossi, A. Bacci and S. Bennati, Shear stress detection in an elastic layer by a piezoelectric polymer tactile sensor, IEEE Trans. Electr. Ins., 24, 1077–1081, (1989).
A.N. Tikhonov and V. Y. Arsenin, Solution to ill-posed problems, Winston, W.H., New York, (1977).
G. Cybenko, Approximations by superpositions of a sigmoidal function, Math. Control, Signals, Systems., 2, 303–314, (1989).
K. Hornik, M. Stichombe and H. White, Multilayer feedforward networks are universal approximators, Neural Networks, 2, 359, (1989).
T. Poggio and F. Girosi, Network for approximation and learning, Proc. IEEE, 78, 1481, (1990).
G. Magenes, R. Benzi and F. Germagnoli, Artificial tactile perception: fine-form discrimination by backpropagation neural network, Proc. of 5th WIRN, E. Caianiello ed., World Scientific, Singapore, (1993).
S. Geva and J. Sitte, A constructive method for multivariate function approximation by multilayer perceptrons, IEEE Trans. Neural Networks, 3, 621–624,(1992).
G. Carpenter and S. Grossberg, ART2: Self-Organization of stable category recognition codes for analog input patterns, Applied Optics, 4919–30, Dec. 1 (1987).
A. Papoulis, Probability, Random variables and stochastic processes, Mc Graw-Hill, New York. (1965).
M. Hu, Visual pattern recognition by momet invariant. IRE trans, on information theory, IT-8, 179–87, (1962).
F. Germagnoli, S. Lazzari and G. Magenes, Neural networks for tactile image reconstruction and classification, Proc. ICANN’ 95, EC2, 275–281, (1995).
F. Germagnoli and G. Magenes, A neural network based system for tactile exploratory tasks, NICROSP’96, IEEE Computer Society, 458–466, (1996).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1997 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Magenes, G. (1997). Tactile Sensors and Systems. In: Cantoni, V., Di Gesù, V., Setti, A., Tegolo, D. (eds) Human and Machine Perception. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-5965-8_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-5965-8_7
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4613-7734-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-4615-5965-8
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive