Faculty Mentors:

• Dr. Qi Guo

Description:

One major challenge in robotic sensing is building tactile sensors that is thin and have wide tactile sensing areas like human skins. A typical approach is to use deformable materials such as elastomers and use a camera to observe the deformation of the material via photometric stereo. However, as the camera has to be placed at a distance to the elastomer, it is difficult to make the sensor as flat as possible. The aim of this project is to develop a compact, vision-based tactile sensor for robots via folded optics. The research will involve two components as follows:

• Design and build a tactile sensor prototype with appropriate light sources and flat elastomers.
• Make an experimental platform that can properly calibrate the sensor using computer vision techniques.

Website: https://qiguo.org

Relevant Technologies:

• Computer vision
• Machine learning
• Computational sensing

Pre-requisite knowledge/skills:

Signal processing, machine learning, computer vision.