WASHINGTON, June 11, 2024 – Today's intelligent robots can accurately recognize many objects through vision and touch. Tactile information, obtained through sensors, along with machine learning algorithms, enables robots to identify objects previously handled.
However, sensing is often confused when presented with objects similar in size and shape, or objects unknown to the robot. Other factors restrictive to robot perception include background noise and the same type of object with different shapes and sizes.
In Applied Physics Reviews, by AIP Publishing, researchers from Tsinghua University worked to break through the difficulties of robotic recognition of various common, yet complex, items.
Humans possess many different types of touch sensing, one of which is thermal feeling. This allows us to sense the wind blowing, perceive hot and cold, and discriminate between matter types, such as wood and metal, because of the different cooling sensations produced. The researchers aimed to mimic this ability by designing a robotic tactile sensing method that incorporated thermal sensations for more robust and accurate object detection.
