The authors discuss active tactile sensing for detecting a contact point between a multifingered robot hand and an unknown object. They define the concept of actively sensible meaning that an active sensing motion can be planned for a sensing event. Assuming more than two sensing events, conditional-minimum-external-sensor-realization is defined, where it is shown that it is possible to reduce the number of external sensors with a well-planned sensing algorithm. Based on these definitions, an active sensing algorithm for detecting the contact point with minimum-external-sensor-realization is proposed. This approach remedies several disadvantages found in conventional approaches. The approach was tested through experiments using a single-finger model with a fingertip tactile sensor.
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