Measuring and Analyzing Human Contact Motion Using Surface Contact Sensors

Abstract

Contacts play an important role in natural robot interaction with humans and environments. As humans generate such motions with ease in their daily lives, understanding their motions can serve to improve robots’ capacity. However, access to human motion data including contacts is still limited. In this study, we propose a framework for measuring human motions involving surface contacts by collecting data from distributed tactile sensors and motion capture systems simultaneously. The contact information is aligned on the human body through position-orientation registration and unified with synchronized body motion data. Some examples of measured contact motion are presented to demonstrate the functionality of the proposed framework.