Takashi Sagisaka

High-density conformable tactile sensing glove

To understand the human intelligence involved phys- ical manipulation of objects, detailed assessment of the states of contact between the surface of the hand and the objects is necessary. This paper proposes a tactile sensing glove based on a branch-shaped tactile sensor sheet that enables pressure measurement at 1052 points on a human hand without critically interfering with the movements of joints on the hand. The change in joint moveability by wearing the glove is evaluated in an experiment, and the result shows the effectiveness of proposed glove design. Finally, as a preliminary result, the data measured when manipulating everyday objects are shown. The glove for assessing human hand skills can contribute not only to the dexterity of robots but also to the implementation method of robotic tactile sensors.

Behavior integration for whole-body close interactions by a humanoid with soft sensor flesh

In order for humanoids to be able to have close interactions with humans or environments using whole body contacts, development of humanoids with soft sensor flesh is one of the key issues. Therefore we have been developed dasiamacrapsila, a humanoid with soft sensor flesh, and it can sense distributed 3D force directions during interaction behavior with humans or environments. However, development of such hardware system itself is not enough. For utilizing the hardware ability more effectively, design of interaction behavior using rich sensor information including tactile sensors is indispensable. Clearly, the analytical design for the specific task is getting harder for such humanoids. This is because those kinds of humanoids are expected to have many contact points with outer environments during their interaction behavior. Also, many locally occurred events, which humanoids have to response, are detected by the distributed sensors. In order to deal with such complex circumstances, behavior integration system is introduced in the interaction behavior of the humanoids with soft sensor flesh. By introducing such behavior integration system, adaptability to many local events can be added incrementally. Also the analytically designed and slightly limited behaviors can be accumulated for generating next richer behavior during the close interactions with humans or outer environments. As such behavior integration system, dasiaParallel Evaluating Monitorspsila are introduced and applied to the macras interaction behaviors with humans and environments in this paper.

Development and applications of high-density tactile sensing glove

To understand principles of human hand dexterity, investigation of dynamic contact control by the hand is essential. Here, we developed a novel high-density tactile sensing glove lined with flexible printed circuit boards (FPCs) which were embedded with 1-mm-sized pressure sensitive elements at 1052 points per hand. Those FPCs are arranged in such a way that did not interfere with natural hand movements. In order to demonstrate how the glove captures the hands sensation and action, we conducted two experiments while human subjects wore the glove. First, we investigated the relationship between pressure distribution and external force exerted on a grasped object. The results showed that the external force correlates to the pressure distribution and that the direction of the external force can be roughly estimated from the pressure distribution. Second, we observed object discrimination by a blindfold subject. As a result, the difference of exploratory patterns arises from difference of objects used in the task was successfully observed from the data of the glove.