Natural and artificial tactile feedback for dexterous manipulation.

Abstracts

Ilana Nisky, Professor, Ben Gurion University of the Negev

Fine manipulation at our fingertips - Integration of kinesthetic and tactile cues in perception, action, and adaptation.

In many scenarios of object manipulation, we must concurrently control and sense position and force for perception, such as when assessing the stiffness of an object, and for action, such as when controlling tool manipulation and grip forces. There are two kinds of force sensing modalities in our body – kinesthetic and tactile. For example, when cutting with a scalpel, kinesthetic force information is sensed via the tendons and tactile information is sensed via the skin at the interface with the scalpel. In the last decade, significant progress was made in the development of devices for artificial tactile stimulation to the finger pads. These devices cause compelling illusions of augmented mechanical properties and are used successfully to guide action. In this talk, I will discuss our recent behavioral results in the search for understanding kinesthetic and tactile information integration in: (1) perception, (2) control of manipulation and grip forces, and (3) motor adaptation.

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Laurence Willemet, PhD, University of Delft

The minute displacements of skin that carry frictional information for grip regulation.

Humans excel at grasping and manipulating an impressive range of objects of different sizes, shapes, and surface properties. This incredible ability is subserved by a refined sense of touch that informs the central nervous system whether the object is firmly grasped or on the verge of falling. Particularly, tactile perception and motor control rely on the frictional estimates that stem from subtle deformation of the skin and micro slippages. However, it is still unclear how perception of friction and partial slippages is inferred from the large influx of data embedded in the skin deformation. In this talk, I will dive into how minute lateral displacement enables subjects to feel the frictional strength of the contact and how far they are from it in order to adjust their grip force in real time. I will show how these findings are applied to a new generation of robotic tactile sensors able to extract the richness of the contact information.

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Stephen Redmond, Professor, University College Dublin

Shining a light on artificial touch sensing.

In this short talk, I will share some tactile sensing inventions developed by my research group, using light intensity measurements to transduce mechanical deformation of an artificial skin to replicate the human sense of touch. There has been an ongoing 50+ year effort to replicate the human sense of touch. The benefits of developing a robust and scalable touch sensing technology are potentially immense, possibly enabling a revolution in intelligent dexterous machines. In this short talk, I will summarise some of the engineering approaches taken in an effort to develop tactile sensors, and highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each. In this I will mention some of the hardware and data challenges we must overcome if we are to endow robotic systems with a human sense of touch. I will share some of our own recent innovations, of which we are proud. And finally, I will speculate on the essential role that touch will play in the ongoing robotics revolution, by enabling robots to learn about the physical world through tactile exploration – how could a machine master the physical world by only looking and never touching?

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Félicien Schiltz, UCLouvain

Fingerpad mechanics and grip force adaptation to friction during object manipulation.

From the child playing with its toys to the surgeon holding its scalpel, object manipulation in everyday life is omnipresent. This skill relies on collecting information on the state of the manipulated object using our senses, with touch being of first importance. Using the information provided by touch, our central nervous system sends commands to our muscles to perform movements that take into account how slippery an object is, its shape, the characteristics of the desired movement, and more.
In this thesis, we studied how finger skin deformations influence object manipulation, as touch and skin deformations are closely linked. First, we present a novel device that allows for the measurement of fingerpad skin deformations during object manipulation and present the link between the grip force and skin deformations during a simple oscillation task. Then, we show how localized fingerpad strains allow to quickly adapt the grip force to the friction when lifting objects. Finally, we show how the grip force is adjusted so that the upper bound of the amount of partial slip and finger skin deformation remain similar across friction conditions.
This work contributes to the understanding of the role of touch during object manipulation and provides useful information for the design of friction sensors and somatosensory prostheses.

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Organizers / contact

• Benoît Delhaye
• Philippe Lefèvre
• Jean-Louis Thonnard