Feature-guided exploration with a robotic finger

Haptic exploration with robotic fingers is accomplished by feature-guided exploration, where information about surface features such as cracks and ridges is used to guide the finger in an exploratory procedure. A local exploration strategy uses contact trajectory information from a tactile sensor to identify features while moving over and around them. Using an algorithm based on the Voronoi diagram, an approximation of the medial axis of the feature is found, then pruned using an edge length threshold. Multiple feature skeletons are then used to create a global skeleton that partitions the surface into regions. The models resulting from these local and global explorations can be used to characterize objects for information storage and manipulation planning.