1989 Reports

Mapping Haptic Exploratory Procedures to Multiple Shape Representations

Allen, Peter K.

Research in human haptics has revealed a number of Exploratory Procedures (EP's) that are used in determining attributes of an object, particularly shape. We have used this research as a paradigm for building an intelligent robotic system that can perform shape recognition from touch sensing. In particular, we have found a number of mappings between EP's and shape modeling primitives. In this paper, we discuss the choice of shape primitive for each EP, and present results from experiments with a Utah-MIT dexterous hand system. We also present a vision algorithm to complement active touch sensing for the task of autonomous shape recovery.