Simulation of tactile sensors using soft contacts for robot grasping applications

Abstract

In the context of robot grasping and manipulation, realistic simulation requires accurate modeling of contacts between bodies and, in a practical level, accurate simulation of touch sensors. This paper addresses the problem of simulating a tactile sensor considering soft contacts and full friction description. The developed model consists of a surface contact patch described by a mesh of contact elements. For each element, a full friction description is built considering stick-slip phenomena. The developed sensor model is implemented using OpenRAVE and used to perform typical tasks related to tactile sensors. The performance of the simulated sensor is then compared to a real one. It is also demonstrated how it can be integrated on the simulation of a complete robot grasping system.