# 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.

## Key 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.

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Source: https://tomesphere.com/paper/1904.02252