HandCept: A Visual-Inertial Fusion Framework for Accurate Proprioception in Dexterous Hands

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Huang, Junda, Zhou, Jianshu, Guo, Honghao, Liu, Yunhui
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Huang, Junda
Zhou, Jianshu
Guo, Honghao
Liu, Yunhui
author_facet Huang, Junda
Zhou, Jianshu
Guo, Honghao
Liu, Yunhui
contents As robotics progresses toward general manipulation, dexterous hands are becoming increasingly critical. However, proprioception in dexterous hands remains a bottleneck due to limitations in volume and generality. In this work, we present HandCept, a novel visual-inertial proprioception framework designed to overcome the challenges of traditional joint angle estimation methods. HandCept addresses the difficulty of achieving accurate and robust joint angle estimation in dynamic environments where both visual and inertial measurements are prone to noise and drift. It leverages a zero-shot learning approach using a wrist-mounted RGB-D camera and 9-axis IMUs, fused in real time via a latency-free Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). Our results show that HandCept achieves joint angle estimation errors between $2^{\circ}$ and $4^{\circ}$ without observable drift, outperforming visual-only and inertial-only methods. Furthermore, we validate the stability and uniformity of the IMU system, demonstrating that a common base frame across IMUs simplifies system calibration. To support sim-to-real transfer, we also open-sourced our high-fidelity rendering pipeline, which is essential for training without real-world ground truth. This work offers a robust, generalizable solution for proprioception in dexterous hands, with significant implications for robotic manipulation and human-robot interaction.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_08213
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle HandCept: A Visual-Inertial Fusion Framework for Accurate Proprioception in Dexterous Hands
Huang, Junda
Zhou, Jianshu
Guo, Honghao
Liu, Yunhui
Robotics
As robotics progresses toward general manipulation, dexterous hands are becoming increasingly critical. However, proprioception in dexterous hands remains a bottleneck due to limitations in volume and generality. In this work, we present HandCept, a novel visual-inertial proprioception framework designed to overcome the challenges of traditional joint angle estimation methods. HandCept addresses the difficulty of achieving accurate and robust joint angle estimation in dynamic environments where both visual and inertial measurements are prone to noise and drift. It leverages a zero-shot learning approach using a wrist-mounted RGB-D camera and 9-axis IMUs, fused in real time via a latency-free Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). Our results show that HandCept achieves joint angle estimation errors between $2^{\circ}$ and $4^{\circ}$ without observable drift, outperforming visual-only and inertial-only methods. Furthermore, we validate the stability and uniformity of the IMU system, demonstrating that a common base frame across IMUs simplifies system calibration. To support sim-to-real transfer, we also open-sourced our high-fidelity rendering pipeline, which is essential for training without real-world ground truth. This work offers a robust, generalizable solution for proprioception in dexterous hands, with significant implications for robotic manipulation and human-robot interaction.
title HandCept: A Visual-Inertial Fusion Framework for Accurate Proprioception in Dexterous Hands
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.08213