While lasers and camera vision guide robot movement, these lightweight and affordable whiskers add tactile abilities to workplace and domestic robots, allowing them to navigate confined or cluttered spaces more effectively.
"Like a rat's whiskers, these sensors can be used to overcome a robot's range-finder or camera blind spots which may not 'see' or register an object close by," says Flinders College of Science and Engineering PhD candidate Simon Pegoli. These whiskers also reveal properties such as the moveability of objects, which are undetectable by cameras or standard range-finder sensors.
Researchers are utilizing mechanical beam theory to perfect the whisker shape, enabling robots to "touch and interpret the weight of objects they run into, potentially moving the obstacles out of their path and also avoid damage," says mechatronics graduate Mr Pegoli.
"Every space is different, so giving robots effective tactile sensor systems to map their tasks and 'visualise' movement in their range will advance their abilities," he says.
"We'll continue to put these electro-mechanical 'whisker' prototypes to the test in problematic scenarios so the robot's operating system will eventually know how to respond to the information they gather."
Associate Professor Dr. Russell Brinkworth, who specializes in Autonomous Systems, is aiding researchers in transitioning robotics from the lab to real-world environments by creating adaptive artificial systems.
"We would like to see these whiskers function in a way similar to how our fingertips can assess the weight, shape and kind of object before us," says Associate Professor Brinkworth, a coauthor of a new article published in Sensors and Actuators A: Physical.
"These 3D printed sensor whiskers can be produced at low cost and provide robots with numerous useful additional capabilities."
Research Report:Optimising electromechanical whisker design for contact localisation
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