Tactile sensor control for robotic manipulations

The task of raising a rectangular parallelopiped object on the plane surface to a standing position by a robot manipulator is considered. An initial contact between the object and the surface is assumed to be a point contact. To perform the task, the manipulator needs to be servoed to that the object position changes from a point contact to an edge (line) contact and then to a plane contact, using sensory feedback from tactile and force/torques sensors. After an initial contact, the object is rotated around the gripper approach vector till the object makes a line contact with the surface. The angle between the gripper-held object and the surface is then calculated from tactile sensory information. The position and orientation of the gripper are modified based on the current gripper position and orientation, and the angle calculated so as to place the object on the plane. A simple experiment is conducted to demonstrate the applicability of calculating the angle between the object and the surface from tactile sensory information