Exploring Proximity and Tactile Sensing for Robotic Manipulation

Engineering notes

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Chinese explanation / 中文解读

中文解读待补充：本站会优先为 VLA、具身智能、人形机器人控制、机器人操作等高价值论文补充中文说明。

Original abstract

Pre-touch sensing, or sensing information about an object before contact, is an attractive modality for robot hands as it can allow a robot to anticipate and respond to a contact before it happens. In this work, we introduce ToFTouch, a multimodal tactile sensor combining three multizone (4$\times$4 resolution) time-of-flight sensors with an optics-based pressure sensing array. We mount this sensor on a parallel jaw gripper and demonstrate its utility on three distinct tasks: (i) pre-grasp adjustment, (ii) item extraction from clutter, and (iii) item insertion into tight spaces. For pre-grasp adjustment, ToF feedback reduced cycle time by 7.4$\%$ by enabling anticipatory gripper closure during approach. For extraction, ToF sensing enabled successful retrieval across all tested depth offsets ($\pm$2 cm) deviating from the nominal pick point, including conditions where baseline approaches failed, with standard deviations below 0.4 cm. For insertion into dense clutter, we explore the proximity and tactile information provided from ToFTouch during an insertion trajectory. The results demonstrate the utility of multizone ToF sensing in a manipulation environment.

Links and sources

• Official / arXiv page
• PDF from original source

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