FlexiCup: Wireless Multimodal Suction Cup with Dual-Zone Vision-Tactile Sensing

TL;DR

FlexiCup is a versatile wireless suction cup with dual-zone vision-tactile sensing, enabling contact-aware manipulation across different pneumatic modes through modular design and diffusion-based learning.

Contribution

The paper introduces a modular, dual-mode sensing suction cup with decoupled sensing and actuation, validated through versatile control paradigms and learning methods.

Findings

Achieved 90.0% success with vacuum mode and 86.7% with Bernoulli mode in grasping tasks.

Diffusion-based learning attained 73.3% and 66.7% success in manipulation tasks.

Multi-head attention improved coordination of dual-zone observations by 13%.

Abstract

Conventional suction cups lack sensing capabilities for contact-aware manipulation in unstructured environments. This paper presents FlexiCup, a multimodal suction cup with wireless electronics that integrate dual-zone vision-tactile sensing. The central zone dynamically switches between vision and tactile modalities via illumination control, while the peripheral zone provides continuous spatial awareness. The modular mechanical design supports both vacuum (sustained-contact adhesion) and Bernoulli (contactless lifting) actuation while maintaining the identical dual-zone sensing architecture, demonstrating sensing-actuation decoupling where sensing and actuation principles are orthogonally separable. We validate hardware versatility through dual control paradigms. Modular perception-driven grasping achieves comparable success rates across vacuum (90.0%) and Bernoulli (86.7%) modes using identical sensing and control pipelines, validating the sensing architecture's effectiveness across fundamentally different pneumatic principles. Diffusion-based end-to-end learning achieves 73.3% and 66.7% success on contact-aware manipulation tasks, with ablation studies confirming 13% improvements from multi-head attention coordinating dual-zone observations. Hardware designs, firmware, and experimental videos are available at the companion website: https://flexicup.junhaogong.top.