GelSight Wedge: Measuring High-Resolution 3D Contact Geometry with a Compact Robot Finger

TL;DR

The paper introduces the GelSight Wedge, a compact tactile sensor capable of high-resolution 3D contact geometry measurement, suitable for fine manipulation and pose tracking in robotic fingers.

Contribution

It presents a novel, compact GelSight Wedge sensor optimized for high-resolution 3D reconstruction in robotic fingers, extending lighting configurations and demonstrating practical applications.

Findings

High-resolution 3D contact geometry measurement achieved

Sensor size reduced to human finger scale

Effective 3D pose tracking demonstrated

Abstract

Vision-based tactile sensors have the potential to provide important contact geometry to localize the objective with visual occlusion. However, it is challenging to measure high-resolution 3D contact geometry for a compact robot finger, to simultaneously meet optical and mechanical constraints. In this work, we present the GelSight Wedge sensor, which is optimized to have a compact shape for robot fingers, while achieving high-resolution 3D reconstruction. We evaluate the 3D reconstruction under different lighting configurations, and extend the method from 3 lights to 1 or 2 lights. We demonstrate the flexibility of the design by shrinking the sensor to the size of a human finger for fine manipulation tasks. We also show the effectiveness and potential of the reconstructed 3D geometry for pose tracking in the 3D space.