Tactile Robotics: An Outlook

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of tactile robotics, discussing recent technological advances, integration with other modalities, and challenges, aiming to inspire future innovations across various industries.

Contribution

It offers a holistic outlook on tactile sensing technologies, datasets, and integration challenges, highlighting future directions for tactile robotics research.

Findings

Diverse tactile sensing technologies have been developed, including piezoresistive, piezoelectric, capacitive, magnetic, and optical sensors.

Simulation tools now support large-scale tactile datasets for sensor design and algorithm development.

Integration of tactile sensing with vision and action strategies is expanding the scope of tactile robotics.

Abstract

Robotics research has long sought to give robots the ability to perceive the physical world through touch in an analogous manner to many biological systems. Developing such tactile capabilities is important for numerous emerging applications that require robots to co-exist and interact closely with humans. Consequently, there has been growing interest in tactile sensing, leading to the development of various technologies, including piezoresistive and piezoelectric sensors, capacitive sensors, magnetic sensors, and optical tactile sensors. These diverse approaches utilise different transduction methods and materials to equip robots with distributed sensing capabilities, enabling more effective physical interactions. These advances have been supported in recent years by simulation tools that generate large-scale tactile datasets to support sensor designs and algorithms to interpret and improve the utility of tactile data. The integration of tactile sensing with other modalities, such as vision, as well as with action strategies for active tactile perception highlights the growing scope of this field. To further the transformative progress in tactile robotics, a holistic approach is essential. In this outlook article, we examine several challenges associated with the current state of the art in tactile robotics and explore potential solutions to inspire innovations across multiple domains, including manufacturing, healthcare, recycling and agriculture.