Robots have been brought to work close to humans in many scenarios. For coexistence and collaboration, robots should be safe and pleasant for humans to interact with. To this end, the robots could be both physically soft with multimodal sensing/perception, so that the robots could have better awareness of the surrounding environment, as well as to respond properly to humans' action/intention. This paper introduces a novel soft robotic link, named ProTac, that possesses multiple sensing modes: tactile and proximity sensing, based on computer vision and a functional material. These modalities come from a layered structure of a soft transparent silicon skin, a polymer dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) film, and reflective markers. Here, the PDLC film can switch actively between the opaque and the transparent state, from which the tactile sensing and proximity sensing can be obtained by using cameras solely built inside the ProTac link. In this paper, inference algorithms for tactile proximity perception are introduced. Evaluation results of two sensing modalities demonstrated that, with a simple activation strategy, ProTac link could effectively perceive useful information from both approaching and in-contact obstacles. The proposed sensing device is expected to bring in ultimate solutions for design of robots with softness, whole-body and multimodal sensing, and safety control strategies.
翻译:机器人在很多情况下都与人类紧密接触。 为了共存与合作,机器人应该安全和舒适,让人类能够互动。 为此,机器人可以使用多式感应/感知,在物理上既软又多式感应/感知,以使机器人能够更好地了解周围环境,并适当应对人类的动作/意图。本文引入了一个名为ProTac的新型软机器人链接,它拥有多种感知模式:根据计算机视觉和功能材料的触摸和近距离感。这些模式来自软透明硅皮、聚合散散液体晶体(PDLC)胶片和反射标记的层结构。在这里,PDLC电影可以在不透明与透明状态之间积极转换,从此可以使用完全在 ProTac 链接内建造的相机获得触动感应和近距离感测。在本文中,引入了两种感知感知方式的推算法。两种感测模式的评估结果表明,通过简单的感应策略,ProTac链接(PLC)可以有效地从最终的感测到设计装置的预感测, 以及软感测方式的策略中,预感测到最终的感测和感测。