Stable In-Grasp Manipulation with a Low-Cost Robot Hand by Using 3-Axis Tactile Sensors with a CNN

The use of tactile information is one of the most important factors for achieving stable in-grasp manipulation. Especially with low-cost robotic hands that provide low-precision control, robust in-grasp manipulation is challenging. Abundant tactile information could provide the required feed-back to achieve reliable in-grasp manipulation also in such cases. In this research, soft distributed 3-axis skin sensors ("uSkin") and 6-axis F/T (force/torque) sensors were mounted on each fingertip of an Allegro Hand to provide rich tactile information. These sensors yielded 78 measurements for each fingertip (72 measurements from the uSkin and 6 measurements from the 6-axis F/T sensor). However, such high-dimensional tactile information can be difficult to process because of the complex contact states between the grasped object and the fingertips. Therefore, a convolutional neural network (CNN) was employed to process the tactile information. In this paper, we explored the importance of the different sensors for achieving in-grasp manipulation. Successful in-grasp manipulation with untrained daily objects was achieved when both 3-axis uSkin and 6-axis F/T information was provided and when the information was processed using a CNN.