New sensor gives robots dexterity

September 22, 2014 02:18 am | Updated 02:18 am IST - Washington:

Armed with the GelSight sensor, a robot can grasp a freely hanging USB cable and plug it into a USB port.

Armed with the GelSight sensor, a robot can grasp a freely hanging USB cable and plug it into a USB port.

Researchers, including one of Indian-origin, have equipped a robot with a new tactile sensor that gives it unprecedented dexterity, letting it grasp a USB cable draped freely over a hook and insert it into a port.

The sensor is an adaptation of a technology called GelSight, which was developed by the lab of Edward Adelson from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The sensor is small enough to fit on a robot’s gripper and its processing algorithm is faster, so it can give the robot feedback in real time.

According to Robert Platt, an assistant professor of computer science at Northeastern University and the research team’s robotics expert, this type of fine-grained manipulation is unprecedented.

The MIT team — which consists of Mr. Adelson; first author Rui Li, a PhD student; Wenzhen Yuan, a Master’s student; and Mandayam Srinivasan, a senior research scientist in the Department of Mechanical Engineering — designed and built the sensor. Platt’s team at Northeastern developed the robotic controller and conducted the experiments.

Optical algorithms Whereas most tactile sensors use mechanical measurements to gauge mechanical forces, GelSight uses optics and computer-vision algorithms.

A GelSight sensor consists of a slab of transparent, synthetic rubber coated on one side with a metallic paint.

The rubber conforms to any object it’s pressed against, and the metallic paint evens out the light-reflective properties of diverse materials, making it much easier to make precise optical measurements.

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