Tactile sensing for robotics

Tactile sensors determine various aspects of the environment through direct contact with objects within that environment. Such sensors can be used to ascertain the distribution of forces over an area, and can also be used to sense shape parameters, location, and orientation of objects touching the sensor. The simplest form of tactile sensor consists of a single touch probe, but effort has also been put into developing sensors that consist of an orthogonal grid, or array, of sensing elements. Each element is known as a tactel, a term derived from `tactile element´. Such sensors produce as output a digital image that can be input to a conventional image processing system, as might be used for analysing images from a vision camera. The paper describes the operation of a very high resolution tactile sensor array; it is able to detect detailed surface variations which are beyond the capabilities of most other tactile sensors. Some aspects of tactile sensing compared to those of vision are also discussed