Soft-bubble: A highly compliant dense geometry tactile sensor for robot manipulation

TL;DR

This paper introduces Soft-bubble, a lightweight, highly compliant dense geometry tactile sensor using an inflated latex membrane and depth sensing, enabling improved tactile perception and manipulation in robotics.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel, easy-to-build tactile sensor design that combines compliance with high-resolution geometry sensing for robotic manipulation.

Findings

Effective tactile-object classification demonstrated

Pose estimation and tracking capabilities shown

Enhanced manipulation robustness discussed

Abstract

Incorporating effective tactile sensing and mechanical compliance is key towards enabling robust and safe operation of robots in unknown, uncertain and cluttered environments. Towards realizing this goal, we present a lightweight, easy-to-build, highly compliant dense geometry sensor and end effector that comprises an inflated latex membrane with a depth sensor behind it. We present the motivations and the hardware design for this Soft-bubble and demonstrate its capabilities through example tasks including tactile-object classification, pose estimation and tracking, and nonprehensile object manipulation. We also present initial experiments to show the importance of high-resolution geometry sensing for tactile tasks and discuss applications in robust manipulation.