Small optical tactile sensor for robots

We proposed the downsizing of an optical tactile sensor using an elastic body. This sensor can be used as a tactile sensor of robots. An elastic body, the layers of light, and a camera are used for this sensor. The layers of light use modification of an elastic body as a contour line. A camera captures the contour line. And forces are detected from the obtained picture. In previous research, modification of an elastic body was conventionally approximated by a cubic polynomial. Therefore, two layers of light were used. In this research, one layer of light was used by approximating modification of an elastic body by a second-order polynomial. The result of the evaluation experiment showed that this research was able to detect force in equivalent accuracy as compared with the algorithm using approximation by a cubic polynomial.