Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
contact anticipation
tactile sensing
proximity sensing
perisensory space
whole-body sensing
Design, Mapping, and Contact Anticipation with 3D-printed Whole-Body Tactile and Proximity Sensors
🤖 AI Summary
This work addresses the challenge robots face in dynamically shared environments due to the absence of full-body, morphology-adaptive tactile and proximity sensing, which hinders early contact anticipation. To overcome this limitation, the authors propose GenTact-Prox—an entirely 3D-printed, modular, and programmable artificial skin capable of conforming to arbitrary robot morphologies while integrating both tactile and proximity perception. They further introduce a data-driven framework that constructs a “peripersonal space” representation for real-time pre-contact prediction. Deployed with five units on a Franka Research 3 robot, the system detects nearby objects at distances up to 18 cm, substantially enhancing safe interaction capabilities. This study presents the first demonstration of a full-body, morphology-adaptive multimodal perceptual skin, establishing a new paradigm for robotic environmental awareness.
📝 Abstract
Robots operating in dynamic and shared environments benefit from anticipating contact before it occurs. We present GenTact-Prox, a fully 3D-printed artificial skin that integrates tactile and proximity sensing for contact detection and anticipation. The artificial skin platform is modular in design, procedurally generated to fit any robot morphology, and can cover the whole body of a robot. The skin achieved detection ranges of up to 18 cm during evaluation. To characterize how robots perceive nearby space through this skin, we introduce a data-driven framework for mapping the Perisensory Space -- the body-centric volume of space around the robot where sensors provide actionable information for contact anticipation. We demonstrate this approach on a Franka Research 3 robot equipped with five GenTact-Prox units, enabling online object-aware operation and contact prediction.
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
3D-printed artificial skin
tactile and proximity sensing
contact anticipation
Perisensory Space
modular robot skin
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