An Anthropomorphic Robot Finger For Investigating Artificial Tactile Perception

In this paper the design, implementation, and testing of an artificial tactile sensing system incorporating an articulated robot finger are presented. It was our primary aim in this work to set up the hardware and software tools necessary for investigating basic issues in artificial tactile perception. In the first part of the paper the criteria followed in the design of the robot finger and of its motor and sensory com ponents are outlined. The second part of the paper deals with the problem of defining a hierarchical architecture for the control of the ex ploratory finger. In this context, particular attention is de voted to the description of a set of tactile subroutines that are intended to replicate some of the basic sensory motor se quences adopted by humans for tactile exploration. The main features of the high-level planner, which is supposed to super vise the execution of those tactile primitives, are also discussed. Finally, experimental results that demonstrate the capabil ity of the robotic system of executing the previously defined tactile subroutines and of extracting specific object features are presented.