Action-Driven Tactile Object Exploration for Shape Reconstruction via Silver Nanowire Injected Sensors

We present an action-driven tactile exploration system using flexible touch sensors integrated into the fingertips of a robot hand. These sensors are made from foams injected with silver nanotubes that exhibit resistance changes under pressure to enable tactile perception. A microcontroller-based unit captures the resistance, with communication deployed using the Robot Operating System. Our approach is evaluated in tactile object exploration, where robotic finger movements estimate the coordinates of the points of contact upon collisions with an object. Through repeated grasps, a point cloud of the shape of an object is generated. Distinct finger movements, or affordances, are developed to collect new contact points to discriminate four different shapes, including cube, cylinder, pyramid, and sphere. We benchmark our approach on medium and large sets of objects.