FingerVision with Whiskers: Light Touch Detection with Vision-based Tactile Sensors

In order to increase the sensitivity of the vision-based tactile sensor FingerVision especially to normal force, we explore an idea of introducing whiskers as an alternative to markers. Since whiskers deforms more largely against light touch than markers, the image change of the FingerVision camera is larger, and thus the resolution of force is increased. In this paper, we fabricate and compare some versions of FingerVision with whiskers. The empirical comparisons demonstrate that the idea to introduce whiskers work as we expect. This paper also demonstrates intuitive applications, pulling a tissue paper grasped by a robot and poking a standing pencil by a robot.