Tactile sensing for an anthropomorphic robotic hand: Hardware and signal processing

In this paper, a tactile sensing system for an anthropomorphic robot hand is presented. The tactile sensing system is designed as a construction kit making it very versatile. The sensor data preprocessing is embedded into the hand's hardware structure and is fully integrated. The sensor system is able to gather tactile pressure profiles and to measure vibrations in the sensor's cover. Additionally to the introduction of the hardware, the signal processing and the classification of the acquired sensor data will be explained in detail. These algorithms make the tactile sensing system capable to detect contact points, to classify contact patterns and to detect slip conditions during object manipulation and grasping.