LONDON—Engineers at Queen Mary University here have developed a sensor that enhances tactile capabilities in robots, allowing them to “feel” objects and adjust grip accordingly. L3 F-TOUCH is lightweight, low-cost and wireless, making it an affordable option for retrofitting existing end-of-arm tooling.
The sensor can measure an object’s geometry and determine the forces necessary to interact with it. Unlike other sensors that estimate interaction forces via tactile information acquired by camera images, the device measures forces directly, achieving higher measurement accuracy.