TransForce: Transferable Force Prediction for Vision-based Tactile Sensors with Sequential Image Translation

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Chen, Zhuo, Ou, Ni, Zhang, Xuyang, Luo, Shan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866916630057975808
author Chen, Zhuo
Ou, Ni
Zhang, Xuyang
Luo, Shan
author_facet Chen, Zhuo
Ou, Ni
Zhang, Xuyang
Luo, Shan
contents Vision-based tactile sensors (VBTSs) provide high-resolution tactile images crucial for robot in-hand manipulation. However, force sensing in VBTSs is underutilized due to the costly and time-intensive process of acquiring paired tactile images and force labels. In this study, we introduce a transferable force prediction model, TransForce, designed to leverage collected image-force paired data for new sensors under varying illumination colors and marker patterns while improving the accuracy of predicted forces, especially in the shear direction. Our model effectively achieves translation of tactile images from the source domain to the target domain, ensuring that the generated tactile images reflect the illumination colors and marker patterns of the new sensors while accurately aligning the elastomer deformation observed in existing sensors, which is beneficial to force prediction of new sensors. As such, a recurrent force prediction model trained with generated sequential tactile images and existing force labels is employed to estimate higher-accuracy forces for new sensors with lowest average errors of 0.69N (5.8\% in full work range) in $x$-axis, 0.70N (5.8\%) in $y$-axis, and 1.11N (6.9\%) in $z$-axis compared with models trained with single images. The experimental results also reveal that pure marker modality is more helpful than the RGB modality in improving the accuracy of force in the shear direction, while the RGB modality show better performance in the normal direction.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_09870
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle TransForce: Transferable Force Prediction for Vision-based Tactile Sensors with Sequential Image Translation
Chen, Zhuo
Ou, Ni
Zhang, Xuyang
Luo, Shan
Robotics
Vision-based tactile sensors (VBTSs) provide high-resolution tactile images crucial for robot in-hand manipulation. However, force sensing in VBTSs is underutilized due to the costly and time-intensive process of acquiring paired tactile images and force labels. In this study, we introduce a transferable force prediction model, TransForce, designed to leverage collected image-force paired data for new sensors under varying illumination colors and marker patterns while improving the accuracy of predicted forces, especially in the shear direction. Our model effectively achieves translation of tactile images from the source domain to the target domain, ensuring that the generated tactile images reflect the illumination colors and marker patterns of the new sensors while accurately aligning the elastomer deformation observed in existing sensors, which is beneficial to force prediction of new sensors. As such, a recurrent force prediction model trained with generated sequential tactile images and existing force labels is employed to estimate higher-accuracy forces for new sensors with lowest average errors of 0.69N (5.8\% in full work range) in $x$-axis, 0.70N (5.8\%) in $y$-axis, and 1.11N (6.9\%) in $z$-axis compared with models trained with single images. The experimental results also reveal that pure marker modality is more helpful than the RGB modality in improving the accuracy of force in the shear direction, while the RGB modality show better performance in the normal direction.
title TransForce: Transferable Force Prediction for Vision-based Tactile Sensors with Sequential Image Translation
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.09870