Wireless integration of tactile sensing on the hand of a humanoid robot NAO

The new-generation humanoid robots, such as the NAO robot made by Aldebaran Robotics, are characterized by autonomous learning and close interaction with the environment including humans. While equipped with advanced vision and audio features including object and face recognition, speech recognition, sound source recognition, speech synthesis, etc., the NAO robot´s tactile sensing is limited to several buttons that can be used to trigger associated actions. This paper presents the wireless integration of tactile sensing on the hand of a NAO robot. Without any replacement or modification of its existing hardware, the add-on allows the NAO robot to differentiate objects with similar size, color and shape but different weight, stiffness, or texture.