[Paper] Optical Tactile Sensor using a Downsized Algorithm

抄録

The authors propose an algorism for miniaturizing an optical tactile sensor using a thin, flexible elastomer membrane. This tactile sensor is composed a flexible elastomer membrane, a layered light, and an ultra-miniature camera. Irradiating a sheet-like light onto a deformed elastomer enables the deformation of the elastomer to be represented as contour. The two-dimensional images acquired from camera are used to detect three-dimensional force information. In this study, the quadratic polynomials were used to approximate the deformation of the elastomer. Three points, which are composed of two points: the vertex and the fixing points of the elastomer, and one point acquired by a slit light, are sufficient to estimate the parameters, leading to the miniaturization of the sensor. The result of evaluation experiment showed that our method has advantages of being capable of detecting force with the error of 0.1[N] or lower, compared with the output from 6-axis force sensor.