PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

While the operation of tactile sensors is still not very common in robotic applications and research, tactile sensing is often being used in addition to well known and established input channels like (stereo-)vision, laser scanners or time-of-flight cameras. It is not uncommon to reduce the application of the tactile sensors to report the success of an (pre-)calculated grasp. We take tactile sensing where all of the other sensors will sooner or later show be useless: we are manipulating deformable materials, in our case “PLAY-DOH” compound. In a bi-manual robot setup with a high frequency tactile sensor pad mounted on each robot manipulator, we grasp a piece of modeling compound. The deformability of the object is determined. Also, we test the object if it is possible to manipulate it with the pads. If the robot is able to roll the object along the principal axis of the sensor image, the object is undergoing further processing. The modeling compound is successively explored and deformed into a round ball.