Edge detection in tactile images

Some of the edge detection methods well known in robotic vision systems have been applied to detect edges in tactile images. Two dimensional median filtering with a 3 × 3 window size has been employed for the removal of noise present in the tactile images with excellent results. The LTS-200 tactile sensor system developed by the LORD Corporation has been used to obtain the tactile images analyzed in this research. The study has been carried out to obtain the contours of objects smaller in size than the LTS-200 sensor (with an active area of 1.131 in. × 0.707 in.) with a single probing operation. For larger objects, a straight line extraction method has been employed by which one can obtain the polygonal approximation of the shape of the object by sequential touching and integrating the straight lines so extracted.