RI: Small: Optical Skin For Robots: Tactile Sensing and Whole Body Vision

这个项目将使机器人能够感觉到它们触摸的东西。关键的想法是在机器人体内安装摄像头，当机器人皮肤变形时向外观看，也可以通过机器人皮肤在抓住或躲避物体时看到附近的物体。这种方法解决了几个挑战：1)使用数百万像素实现接近人类的分辨率(100万个生物传感器)；2)减少抓取和操纵过程中的遮挡，并在撞击前检测障碍物；3)保护昂贵的电子设备和布线，同时允许更换磨损或损坏的廉价皮肤。人类每月更换一次我们皮肤的外层。关于目前机器人如此笨拙的一种理论是，它们的皮肤几乎没有感觉。触摸时能感觉到的机器人将成为更好的仆人，也更有用，特别是在照顾老年人和其他需要帮助行走、穿衣、清洁或喂食的人时。在家庭和工作场所的许多任务中都需要柔和的触觉。如果机器人能感觉到自己在做什么，教机器人做新任务和学习机器人就会容易得多。如果机器人能感觉到意外接触或所施加的力的大小，那么它们也会更安全，工作起来也更安全。这种方法的可能应用包括感知家具和汽车内饰，这些家具和汽车内部感受到人正在做什么或想做什么，唤醒衣服，感知工具，以及感知地板、墙壁和天花板。光学皮肤传感是一种实用、经济、可制造和可维护的触摸和帮助人的传感方法。该项目的技术目标包括首先建立一个网络，然后在机器人上安装一个由大约100个现成的小型摄像头(不到1立方厘米)组成的网络，该网络能够收集信息，决定关注哪些视频流，并处理视频流以估测力、滑落和物体形状。传感系统中的布线、焊点和其他连接不必反复变形或面临循环或可变应力--这些都是故障的主要来源。确实变形或受压力的材料(皮肤的外层)可以针对传感、抓取和操作以及机械坚固性进行优化，并且在磨损或损坏时可以轻松且廉价地更换。研究人员将通过共同开发一种用于手的“光学皮肤”和一种协同的柔软手来评估他们的工作。一个变革性的想法是积极地将高分辨率成像分布在整个机器人身体上。这减少了遮挡，这是操纵知觉的一个主要问题。鉴于成像传感器的低成本，不再需要将光学传感限制在红外测距仪(单像素深度相机)、线相机或低分辨率区域相机。

This project will enable robots to feel what they touch. The key ideais to put cameras inside the body of the robot, looking outward at therobot skin as it deforms, and also through the robot skin to see nearby objects as they are grasped or avoided. This approach addresses several challenges: 1) achieving close to human resolution (a million biological sensors) using millions of pixels, 2) reducing occlusion during grasping and manipulation, and detecting obstacles before impact, and 3) protecting expensive electronics and wiring while allowing replacement of worn out or damaged inexpensive skin. Humans replace the outer layer of our skin every month. One theory as to why current robots are so clumsy is that they have little or no feeling in their skin. Robots that can feel when they touch will make better servants and be more useful, especially when taking care of older adults and others needing help walking, dressing, cleaning, or feeding. A soft touch is needed in many tasks in the home and workplace. Teaching robots to do new tasks, and robot learning,will be much easier if robots can feel what they are doing. Robots will also be safer, and safer to work with, if they can feel accidental contact or the size of forces they are applying. Possible applications of this approach include aware furniture and car interiors that feel what a human is doing or wants to do, awareclothes, aware tools, and aware floors, walls, and ceilings. Optical skin-based sensing is a practical, affordable, manufacturable, and maintainable approach to sensing for touching and helping people.Technical goals for the project include first building and then installing on a robot a network of about 100 off-the-shelf small cameras (less than 1 cubic centimeter) that is capable of collecting information, deciding what video streams to pay attention to, and processing the video streams to estimate forces, slip, and object shape. The wiring, solder joints, and other connections in the sensing system don't have to repeatedly deform or face cyclic or variable stresses--major sources of failure. The materials that do deform or are stressed (the outer layer of the skin) can be optimized for sensing, grasping and manipulation, and mechanical robustness, and can be easily and cheaply replaced when worn or damaged. The researchers will evaluate their work by co-developing an "optical skin" for hands and a synergistic soft hand. A transformative idea is to aggressively distribute high resolution imaging over the entire robot body. This reduces occlusion, a major issue in perception for manipulation. Given the low cost of imaging sensors, there is no longer a need to restrict optical sensing to infrared range finders (single pixel depthcameras), line cameras, or low resolution area cameras.