Data-Driven Optimization of Tactile Sensor Configurations for Efficient Dexterous Manipulation

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Guo, Haoran, Wang, Haoyang, Li, Zhengxiong, Bai, He, Tao, Lingfeng
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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author Guo, Haoran
Wang, Haoyang
Li, Zhengxiong
Bai, He
Tao, Lingfeng
author_facet Guo, Haoran
Wang, Haoyang
Li, Zhengxiong
Bai, He
Tao, Lingfeng
contents Tactile sensing is critical for learning-based dexterous manipulation, yet principled guidelines for sensor placement remain largely absent. While dense sensor arrays provide rich contact feedback, they impose significant hardware costs and can even degrade policy performance by introducing redundant or conflicting inputs. This paper presents the first systematic framework for quantifying the contribution of individual tactile sensors to deep reinforcement learning (DRL) policy performance. We propose a two-stage approach: a coarse empirical pruning phase that reduces the sensor count on the Shadow Hand from 92 to 21 while retaining 93\% task performance, followed by a fine-grained active learning phase that combines Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) with Lasso regression to rank the functional importance of each remaining sensor. Our analysis reveals that sensors on the thumb, ring finger, and little finger dominate manipulation performance, while middle-finger sensors exhibit negative contributions -- actively degrading policy learning. Ablation studies across three manipulation tasks (block, egg, and pen) confirm that a 14-sensor configuration preserves over 90\% of the full-array performance. Zero-shot transfer experiments on two novel objects and cross-platform validation on the Allegro and Leap Hand further demonstrate that the identified importance rankings generalize across tasks and robot morphologies. These findings establish quantitative deployment guidelines that enable practitioners to select cost-effective sensor configurations with predictable performance trade-offs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_20473
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Data-Driven Optimization of Tactile Sensor Configurations for Efficient Dexterous Manipulation
Guo, Haoran
Wang, Haoyang
Li, Zhengxiong
Bai, He
Tao, Lingfeng
Robotics
Tactile sensing is critical for learning-based dexterous manipulation, yet principled guidelines for sensor placement remain largely absent. While dense sensor arrays provide rich contact feedback, they impose significant hardware costs and can even degrade policy performance by introducing redundant or conflicting inputs. This paper presents the first systematic framework for quantifying the contribution of individual tactile sensors to deep reinforcement learning (DRL) policy performance. We propose a two-stage approach: a coarse empirical pruning phase that reduces the sensor count on the Shadow Hand from 92 to 21 while retaining 93\% task performance, followed by a fine-grained active learning phase that combines Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) with Lasso regression to rank the functional importance of each remaining sensor. Our analysis reveals that sensors on the thumb, ring finger, and little finger dominate manipulation performance, while middle-finger sensors exhibit negative contributions -- actively degrading policy learning. Ablation studies across three manipulation tasks (block, egg, and pen) confirm that a 14-sensor configuration preserves over 90\% of the full-array performance. Zero-shot transfer experiments on two novel objects and cross-platform validation on the Allegro and Leap Hand further demonstrate that the identified importance rankings generalize across tasks and robot morphologies. These findings establish quantitative deployment guidelines that enable practitioners to select cost-effective sensor configurations with predictable performance trade-offs.
title Data-Driven Optimization of Tactile Sensor Configurations for Efficient Dexterous Manipulation
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.20473