Multifingered robotic hands: contact experiments using tactile sensors

Capacitive tactile sensors are constructed and installed to the fingers of the HKUST hands for measurement of position, force and direction of principle curvature of contact point. The hardware and software for signal processing are designed such that the contact information is sent to the motion control computer in real time. Experiments in rolling and sliding contact motions are then performed for testing the functionality of the tactile sensing system in motion control. The measurement of contact velocities obtained from the sensor is also compared with that calculated from the theoretical contact equations. This paper describes the tactile sensing system and the experimental result in contact motion control.