An objective tactile sensing strategy for object recognition and localization

A theory for scheduling sensor moves to obtain tactile information from objects is presented. In this report, tactile measurements are assumed taken from 2-D planar objects and consist of the point of contact of the sensor with an object´s face and the surface normal vector at the contact point, although the theory does not preclude other tactile inputs. The theory is also not limited to 2-D planar objects, and general 3-D objects may be used with a concomitant increase in representation complexity and software development effort. It is only required that there be a finite number of interpretations of the tactile data. A hardware demonstration system is under development.