Contact Distance Estimation by a Soft Active Whisker Sensor Based on Morphological Computation

Nguyen, Nhan Huu; Ngo, Trung Dung; Nguyen, Dinh Quang; Ho, Van Anh

doi:10.1109/biorob49111.2020.9224314

Cited by 9 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 14 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Recently, another approach was proposed to estimate the contact point in an artificial tapered whisker sensor by inspecting the strain according to a specific angular displacement [15]. They demonstrate the unique correlations among strain, contact distance and angular displacement.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

A Lightweight Beak-Like Sensing System for Grasping Tasks of Flapping Aerial Robots

Feliu

Acosta

Feliú

et al. 2022

IEEE Robot. Autom. Lett.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Many sensor systems in robotics are bio-inspired by similar mechanisms in living creatures. Birds frequently use their beaks to grasp and manipulate objects. This work proposes a very lightweight sensor system that emulates a bird's beak, thus allowing flapping aerial robots to interact with the environment, as e.g. to perform grasping or manipulation tasks. The sensor system is composed of a flexible link (beam) actuated by a micro servomotor, two strain gauges placed on different points and a rigid link opposed. Additionally, a new algorithm is also developed that estimates the instant at which the beak impacts with an object, the contact position and the exerted force. Our sensor system outperforms the existing designs in robotics applications, because it is lightweight, small, cheap, with very low computational load and without any complementary perception. It is demonstrated that the adequate placement of two strain gauges allow the estimation of the contact point and the force exerted between the beam and an object, and the accuracy achieved is enough to reckon properties of the object and develop force control systems. The validation has been made and reported through finite-element simulations and experiments, and the results illustrate the efficiency of the prototype and the proposed algorithm.

show abstract

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, our method considers the gravity effect showing its importance in our application what distinguish us from other former methods (e.g. [15]). The paper is organized as follows.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Lightweight Beak-Like Sensing System for Grasping Tasks of Flapping Aerial Robots

Feliu

Acosta

Feliú

et al. 2022

IEEE Robot. Autom. Lett.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Potential exploratory behaviors of a whisker sensor have been exploited for many purposes such as radial distance estimation [13], measuring geometrical attributes [23] and also texture discrimination [24]. Although, up to date, the data processing method of rodent's brain to extract nature of a texture has not been fully understood, many approaches on biomimetic or artificial whiskers have shown that spectral analysis could prove significant texture-related information [25].…”

Section: Feature Extraction For Regressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A similar attempt was done by Nurzaman et al [12] where different physical quantities (e.g., softness and temperature) were obtained separately thanks to adjustable sensor morphology. Highly non-linear characteristic of materials commonly used in soft bodies (e.g., silicone rubber) under different level of external stress excitation is effectively employed to amplify tactile response [13] [14]. Interestingly, the sensor morphology is not only the characteristics of the body alone but combined with other components.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tactile Resilience of Sensory Whisker by Adaptive Morphology

et al. 2022

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Nature is featured by the resiliency, which enables adaptivity to sudden change under many circumstances. Meanwhile, the resiliency in robotic systems is far from comparable to that of the nature. If a robot is partially damaged, often the whole system fails to operate properly. While some approaches have been proposed, the majority of them are focusing on updating the control policy. Such approach, while rather complex, is not always applicable to mechanical damage of the robot body, especially parts that continuously interact with the surrounding environment. In the previous works [1] [2], we introduced an artificial whiskered sensor that exhibited resilience against physical damage by active change of its morphology around the placement of sensory elements (strain gauges), which allowed compensation of location sensing when the whisker was trimmed. In this paper, we extend the approach by using the whisker sensor for texture discrimination tasks. We demonstrate that changing the morphology of the whisker again helps to reduce mismatching between prior knowledge in the frequency/time domain of the sensory signal. This allows the sensory whisker to recover the tactile perception on texture discrimination after the whisker is partially damaged. Furthermore, we also observe that using adaptive sensor morphology would augment tactile perception without the need of computationally expensive recognition and re-classification. This work is expected to shed a light on a new generation of robots that automatically work in the open world where self-maintenance against uncertainties is needed.

show abstract

“…Another approach is that of employing a tapping strategy in sensing distance information by inspecting the strain according to a specific angular displacement [ 24 ]. The authors of the paper in question developed a soft active whisker sensor that yielded errors of over

.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving the Detection of the Contact Point in Active Sensing Antennae by Processing Combined Static and Dynamic Information

Mérida-Calvo

Feliu-Talegón

Feliu-Batlle

2021

Sensors

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The design and application of sensing antenna devices that mimic insect antennae or mammal whiskers is an active field of research. However, these devices still require new developments if they are to become efficient and reliable components of robotic systems. We, therefore, develop and build a prototype composed of a flexible beam, two servomotors that drive the beam and a load cell sensor that measures the forces and torques at the base of the flexible beam. This work reports new results in the area of the signal processing of these devices. These results will make it possible to estimate the point at which the flexible antenna comes into contact with an object (or obstacle) more accurately than has occurred with previous algorithms. Previous research reported that the estimation of the fundamental natural frequency of vibration of the antenna using dynamic information is not sufficient as regards determining the contact point and that the estimation of the contact point using static information provided by the forces and torques measured by the load cell sensor is not very accurate. We consequently propose an algorithm based on the fusion of the information provided by the two aforementioned strategies that enhances the separate benefits of each one. We demonstrate that the adequate combination of these two pieces of information yields an accurate estimation of the contacted point of the antenna link. This will enhance the precision of the estimation of points on the surface of the object that is being recognized by the antenna. Thorough experimentation is carried out in order to show the features of the proposed algorithm and establish its range of application.

show abstract

Contact Distance Estimation by a Soft Active Whisker Sensor Based on Morphological Computation

Cited by 9 publications

References 14 publications

A Lightweight Beak-Like Sensing System for Grasping Tasks of Flapping Aerial Robots

A Lightweight Beak-Like Sensing System for Grasping Tasks of Flapping Aerial Robots

Tactile Resilience of Sensory Whisker by Adaptive Morphology

Improving the Detection of the Contact Point in Active Sensing Antennae by Processing Combined Static and Dynamic Information

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About