TY - JOUR
T1 - A New Silicone Structure for uSkin - A Soft, Distributed, Digital 3-Axis Skin Sensor and Its Integration on the Humanoid Robot iCub
AU - Tomo, Tito Pradhono
AU - Regoli, Massimo
AU - Schmitz, Alexander
AU - Natale, Lorenzo
AU - Kristanto, Harris
AU - Somlor, Sophon
AU - Jamone, Lorenzo
AU - Metta, Giorgio
AU - Sugano, Shigeki
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank M. Accame and V. Gaggero who helped integrating the MTB and A. Vazhapilli who helped with the production of the skin sensor. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers JP25220005, JP17K18183, JP17J10795, and in part by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council in the framework of the NCNR (National Centre for Nuclear Robotics) project (EP/R02572X/1).
Funding Information:
Manuscript received September 10, 2017; accepted January 23, 2018. Date of publication March 7, 2018; date of current version April 11, 2018. This letter was recommended for publication by Associate Editor J. McInroy and Editor J. Wen upon evaluation of the reviewers’ comments. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers JP25220005, JP17K18183, JP17J10795, and in part by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council in the framework of the NCNR (National Centre for Nuclear Robotics) project (EP/R02572X/1). (Corresponding author: Tito Pradhono Tomo.) T. P. Tomo, A. Schmitz, H. Kristanto, S. Somlor, and S. Sugano are with Waseda University, Tokyo 169-8555, Japan (e-mail:, tito@toki.waseda.jp; schmitz@aoni.waseda.jp; kristanto_harris@sugano.mech.waseda.ac.jp; sophon@sugano.mech.waseda.ac.jp; sugano@waseda.jp).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 IEEE.
PY - 2018/7
Y1 - 2018/7
N2 - Tactile sensing is one important element that can enable robots to interact with an unstructured world. By having tactile perception, a robot can explore its environment by touching objects. Like human skin, a tactile sensor that can provide rich information such as distributed normal and shear forces with high density can help the robot to recognize objects. In previous work, we introduced uSkin, a soft skin with distributed 3-axis force-sensitive elements and a center-to-center distance between the 3-axis load cells of 4.7 mm for the flat version. This letter presents a new structure for the distributed soft force transducer that reduces the crosstalk between the components of the 3-axis force measurements. Three dimensionally (3-D) printing the silicone structure eased the prototype production. However, the 3-D printed material has a higher hysteresis than the previously used Ecoflex. Microcontroller boards originally developed for the skin of iCub were implemented for uSkin, increasing the readout frequency and reducing the space requirements and number of wires. The sensor was installed on iCub and successfully used for shape exploration.
AB - Tactile sensing is one important element that can enable robots to interact with an unstructured world. By having tactile perception, a robot can explore its environment by touching objects. Like human skin, a tactile sensor that can provide rich information such as distributed normal and shear forces with high density can help the robot to recognize objects. In previous work, we introduced uSkin, a soft skin with distributed 3-axis force-sensitive elements and a center-to-center distance between the 3-axis load cells of 4.7 mm for the flat version. This letter presents a new structure for the distributed soft force transducer that reduces the crosstalk between the components of the 3-axis force measurements. Three dimensionally (3-D) printing the silicone structure eased the prototype production. However, the 3-D printed material has a higher hysteresis than the previously used Ecoflex. Microcontroller boards originally developed for the skin of iCub were implemented for uSkin, increasing the readout frequency and reducing the space requirements and number of wires. The sensor was installed on iCub and successfully used for shape exploration.
KW - Force and tactile sensing
KW - dexterous manipulation
KW - multifingered hands
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U2 - 10.1109/LRA.2018.2812915
DO - 10.1109/LRA.2018.2812915
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85058016331
SN - 2377-3766
VL - 3
SP - 2584
EP - 2591
JO - IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters
JF - IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters
IS - 3
ER -