GelBelt: A Vision-based Tactile Sensor for Continuous Sensing of Large Surfaces

TL;DR

GelBelt is a novel vision-based tactile sensor that enables continuous, high-accuracy scanning of large surfaces using an elastomeric belt, overcoming limitations of traditional sensors in size and durability.

Contribution

This paper introduces a new elastomeric belt-based tactile sensor capable of continuous large surface scanning, enhancing shape reconstruction and surface fusion.

Findings

High accuracy in shape reconstruction

Effective at scanning speeds up to 45 mm/s

Suitable for large-scale surface sensing

Abstract

Scanning large-scale surfaces is widely demanded in surface reconstruction applications and detecting defects in industries' quality control and maintenance stages. Traditional vision-based tactile sensors have shown promising performance in high-resolution shape reconstruction while suffering limitations such as small sensing areas or susceptibility to damage when slid across surfaces, making them unsuitable for continuous sensing on large surfaces. To address these shortcomings, we introduce a novel vision-based tactile sensor designed for continuous surface sensing applications. Our design uses an elastomeric belt and two wheels to continuously scan the target surface. The proposed sensor showed promising results in both shape reconstruction and surface fusion, indicating its applicability. The dot product of the estimated and reference surface normal map is reported over the sensing area and for different scanning speeds. Results indicate that the proposed sensor can rapidly scan large-scale surfaces with high accuracy at speeds up to 45 mm/s.