Vision based active sensor using a flexible beam

Discusses a vision based active sensing system, called vision based active antenna (VBAA) composed of a camera, an insensitive flexible beam whose force-deformation characteristic is known, and an actuator for rotating the beam. The camera observes the beam deformation that includes the contact information, while the beam is in contact with an object. By solving a set of equations acquired through the camera, the sensor can detect the contact location and the contact force, even though the contact point is hidden by occlusion. For two particular versions, we show some experimental results to verify the basic idea