An objective tactile sensing strategy for object recognition and localization

A theory for scheduling sensor moves to obtain tactile information from objects is presented. In this report, tactile measurements are assumed taken from 2-D planar objects and consist of the point of contact of the sensor with an object's face and the surface normal vector at the contact point, although the theory does not preclude other tactile inputs. The theory is also not limited to 2-D planar objects, and general 3-D objects may be used with a concomitant increase in representation complexity and software development effort. It is only required that there be a finite number of interpretations of the tactile data. A hardware demonstration system is under development.