The paper describes a novel, biomimetic whisker-based sensing technology following the basic design of the facial whiskers of animals such as rats and mice. The sensor consists of a whisker array on each side of a robot. In experiments with the artificial whiskers, the motor drives rotating whiskers, and the center wavelength of a fiber Bragg grating pasted on the whisker will shift when the whisker touches an obstacle. The distance will be obtained by processing the wavelength shift data with algorithms. Then the shape recognition can be realized by postprocessing the distance data. The experimental results prove that the whisker array is capable of accurately gathering the distance and shape information of an object.
This paper introduces a novel shape and texture recognizing technique based on the design of bionic whisker. Whisker arrays are installed on both sides of the robot. In the experiment, the whisker sweeps around to detect the unidentified object. The center wavelength of fiber Bragg grating (FBG) pasted on the whisker shifts when the whisker touches the obstacle. Shape recognition is realized by processing and further calculating the wavelength shift data. At the same time, the whisker sweeps over the surface texture, and the texture information is obtained by processing the wavelength shift data with the time-frequency analysis method. The results show that the whisker sensor can identify the three-dimensional profile shapes of contacted objects and the texture features of touched surfaces effectively.
K: Data analysis; Detector design and construction technologies and materials 1Corresponding author.
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