NONLINEAR SYSTEMS IN ROBOTICS

Surface Shape Identification with Legged Robots Using Tactile Sensing

O. V. Bulichev, A. V. Maloletov

Innopolis University, ul. Universitetskaya 1, Innopolis, 420500 Russia

Abstract: This paper presents an approach to terrain shape detection using an array of tactile sensors or motor torque and encoders. A sparse point cloud at points where the surface is touched by the robot’s feet is converted into a polygonal mesh and a dense 3D point cloud using $\alpha$-shapes derived from a 2D Delaunay triangulation. Cloud-to-Cloud (C2C) and Cloud-to-Mesh (C2M) metrics are used to validate the solution. In the study, a mathematical model of the robot-surface system is developed and numerical experiments are performed on the basis of this model. A modification of Delaunay triangulation is proposed to account for impassable or unexplored areas of the surface. The results of mathematical modeling are confirmed in hardware experiments.

Keywords: tactile sensing, legged robots, identification of terrain properties, alpha shapes, mathematical modeling, simulation

MSC: 70E60

Received: 11.11.2024
Accepted: 18.12.2024

Language: English

DOI: 10.20537/nd241208