Visual Tactile Sensor Based Force Estimation for Position-Force Teleoperation

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel method for estimating contact forces in teleoperation using a vision-based tactile sensor, enabling effective force feedback with low-cost sensors in robotic manipulation.

Contribution

It introduces a depth map-based force estimation technique using the DIGIT tactile sensor and demonstrates its application in a position-force teleoperation system.

Findings

Successful force estimation with DIGIT sensor

Effective force feedback in teleoperation setup

Low-cost tactile sensing for haptic applications

Abstract

Vision-based tactile sensors have gained extensive attention in the robotics community. The sensors are highly expected to be capable of extracting contact information i.e. haptic information during in-hand manipulation. This nature of tactile sensors makes them a perfect match for haptic feedback applications. In this paper, we propose a contact force estimation method using the vision-based tactile sensor DIGIT, and apply it to a position-force teleoperation architecture for force feedback. The force estimation is done by building a depth map for DIGIT gel surface deformation measurement and applying a regression algorithm on estimated depth data and ground truth force data to get the depth-force relationship. The experiment is performed by constructing a grasping force feedback system with a haptic device as a leader robot and a parallel robot gripper as a follower robot, where the DIGIT sensor is attached to the tip of the robot gripper to estimate the contact force. The preliminary results show the capability of using the low-cost vision-based sensor for force feedback applications.