Optic-tactile robotics and medical applications

This paper gives an overview of new developed hardware and software framework for fiber-optical constructional sensory applied to robotics and medical applications. Different sensor types are shown and used together on an robotic arm and are also applied to human spine movement detection. The sensory bases on fiber-optical ribbons. After presenting the different sensors and both application areas the overall system is shown beginning with real-time measurement, processing and calibration, visualization and analysis of the movements. The control loop is closed to the actuators of the robot application. The correlation between different sensor segments will be mapped onto a Petri-net topology to handle interactions. The software suite which puts all parts together will be outlined afterwards.