SonicFinger: Pre-touch and Contact Detection Tactile Sensor for Reactive Pregrasping

Siddharth Rupavatharam, Caleb Escobedo, Daewon Lee, Colin Prepscius, Larry Jackel, Richard Howard, Volkan Isler

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

Robot end effectors with proximity detection and contact sensing capabilities can reactively position the gripper to align objects and ensure successful grasps. In this paper, we introduce SonicFinger, an acoustic aura based sensing system capable of full-surface pre-touch and contact sensing. A single piezoelectric transducer embedded within a novel 3D printed finger is excited using a monotone to create an acoustic aura encompassing the finger; this enables pre-touch sensing and gripper alignment, while changes in finger-transducer acoustic coupling indicate contact. SonicFinger is low-cost, compact, and easy to manufacture and assemble. Sensing capabilities are evaluated using a set of objects with various physical properties such as optical reflectivity, dielectric constants, mechanical properties, and acoustic absorption. A dataset with over 8,000 proximity and contact events is collected. Our system shows a pre-touch detection true positive rate (TPR) of 92.4% and a true negative rate (TNR) of 95.3%. Contact detection experiments show a TPR of 93.7% and a TNR of 98.7%. Furthermore, pretouch detection information from Sonic Finger is used to adjust the robot grippers pose to align a target object at the center of both fingers.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings - ICRA 2023
Subtitle of host publicationIEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages12556-12562
Number of pages7
ISBN (Electronic)9798350323658
DOIs
StatePublished - 2023
Externally publishedYes
Event2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2023 - London, United Kingdom
Duration: May 29 2023Jun 2 2023

Publication series

Name2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)

Conference

Conference2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2023
Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
CityLondon
Period5/29/236/2/23

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 IEEE.

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