In this paper we present a novel robotic palpation method for the lump shape estimation using contact pressure distribution. Many previous researches about the robotic palpation have used a stiffness map, which is not suitable to obtain geometrical information of a lump. As a result, they require a large data set and long palpation time to estimate the lump shape. Instead of using the stiffness map, the proposed palpation method uses the difference between the normal force direction and the surface normal to detect the lump boundary and estimate its normal. The palpation trajectory is generated by the normal of the lump boundary to track the lump boundary in real-time. The proposed approach requires small data set and short palpation time for the lump shape estimation since the shape can be directly estimated from the optimally generated palpation trajectory. An experiment result shows that our method can find the lump shape accurately in real-time with small data and short time.

• 김형균(Mechanical Engineering, POSTECH) | Hyoungkyun Kim
• 최승문(Computer Science and Engineering, POSTECH) | Seungmoon Choi
• 정완균(Mechanical Engineering, POSTECH) | Wan Kyun Chung Corresponding author