Whisker-Inspired Tactile Sensing: A Sim2Real Approach for Precise Underwater Contact Tracking

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Li, Hao, Xing, Chengyi, Khan, Saad, Zhong, Miaoya, Cutkosky, Mark R.
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Li, Hao
Xing, Chengyi
Khan, Saad
Zhong, Miaoya
Cutkosky, Mark R.
author_facet Li, Hao
Xing, Chengyi
Khan, Saad
Zhong, Miaoya
Cutkosky, Mark R.
contents Aquatic mammals, such as pinnipeds, utilize their whiskers to detect and discriminate objects and analyze water movements, inspiring the development of robotic whiskers for sensing contacts, surfaces, and water flows. We present the design and application of underwater whisker sensors based on Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) technology. These passive whiskers are mounted along the robot$'$s exterior to sense its surroundings through light, non-intrusive contacts. For contact tracking, we employ a sim-to-real learning framework, which involves extensive data collection in simulation followed by a sim-to-real calibration process to transfer the model trained in simulation to the real world. Experiments with whiskers immersed in water indicate that our approach can track contact points with an accuracy of $<2$ mm, without requiring precise robot proprioception. We demonstrate that the approach also generalizes to unseen objects.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_14005
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Whisker-Inspired Tactile Sensing: A Sim2Real Approach for Precise Underwater Contact Tracking
Li, Hao
Xing, Chengyi
Khan, Saad
Zhong, Miaoya
Cutkosky, Mark R.
Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
Aquatic mammals, such as pinnipeds, utilize their whiskers to detect and discriminate objects and analyze water movements, inspiring the development of robotic whiskers for sensing contacts, surfaces, and water flows. We present the design and application of underwater whisker sensors based on Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) technology. These passive whiskers are mounted along the robot$'$s exterior to sense its surroundings through light, non-intrusive contacts. For contact tracking, we employ a sim-to-real learning framework, which involves extensive data collection in simulation followed by a sim-to-real calibration process to transfer the model trained in simulation to the real world. Experiments with whiskers immersed in water indicate that our approach can track contact points with an accuracy of $<2$ mm, without requiring precise robot proprioception. We demonstrate that the approach also generalizes to unseen objects.
title Whisker-Inspired Tactile Sensing: A Sim2Real Approach for Precise Underwater Contact Tracking
topic Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.14005