Abstract
The GelSight-like visual tactile (VT) sensor has gained popularity as a high-resolution tactile sensing technology for robots, capable of measuring touch geometry using a single RGB camera. However, the development of multi-modal perception for VT sensors remains a challenge, limited by the mono camera. In this paper, we propose the GelSplitter, a new framework approach the multi-modal VT sensor with synchronized multi-modal cameras and resemble a more human-like tactile receptor. Furthermore, we focus on 3D tactile reconstruction and implement a compact sensor structure that maintains a comparable size to state-of-the-art VT sensors, even with the addition of a prism and a near infrared (NIR) camera. We also design a photometric fusion stereo neural network (PFSNN), which estimates surface normals of objects and reconstructs touch geometry from both infrared and visible images. Our results demonstrate that the accuracy of RGB and NIR fusion is higher than that of RGB images alone. Additionally, our GelSplitter framework allows for a flexible configuration of different camera sensor combinations, such as RGB and thermal imaging.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Abad, A.C., Ranasinghe, A.: Visuotactile sensors with emphasis on gelsight sensor: a review. IEEE Sens. J. 20(14), 7628–7638 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1109/JSEN.2020.2979662
Abad, A.C., Reid, D., Ranasinghe, A.: Haptitemp: a next-generation thermosensitive gelsight-like visuotactile sensor. IEEE Sens. J. 22(3), 2722–2734 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1109/JSEN.2021.3135941
Arar, M., Ginger, Y., Danon, D., Bermano, A.H., Cohen-Or, D.: Unsupervised multi-modal image registration via geometry preserving image-to-image translation. In: 2020 IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pp. 13407–13416 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1109/CVPR42600.2020.01342
Bao, L., et al.: Flexible electronic skin for monitoring of grasping state during robotic manipulation. Soft Rob. 10(2), 336–344 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1089/soro.2022.0014
Castaño-Amoros, J., Gil, P., Puente, S.: Touch detection with low-cost visual-based sensor. In: International Conference on Robotics, Computer Vision and Intelligent Systems (2021)
Cui, S., Wang, R., Hu, J., Wei, J., Wang, S., Lou, Z.: In-hand object localization using a novel high-resolution visuotactile sensor. IEEE Trans. Industr. Electron. 69(6), 6015–6025 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1109/TIE.2021.3090697
Cui, S., Wang, R., Hu, J., Zhang, C., Chen, L., Wang, S.: Self-supervised contact geometry learning by gelstereo visuotactile sensing. IEEE Trans. Instrum. Meas. 71, 1–9 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1109/TIM.2021.3136181
Deng, X., Dragotti, P.L.: Deep convolutional neural network for multi-modal image restoration and fusion. IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell. 43(10), 3333–3348 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1109/TPAMI.2020.2984244
Donlon, E., Dong, S., Liu, M., Li, J., Adelson, E., Rodriguez, A.: Gelslim: a high-resolution, compact, robust, and calibrated tactile-sensing finger. In: 2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp. 1927–1934 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2018.8593661
Fang, B., Long, X., Sun, F., Liu, H., Zhang, S., Fang, C.: Tactile-based fabric defect detection using convolutional neural network with attention mechanism. IEEE Trans. Instrum. Meas. 71, 1–9 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1109/TIM.2022.3165254
Hu, J., et al.: Gelstereo palm: a novel curved visuotactile sensor for 3d geometry sensing. IEEE Trans. Ind. Inf. 1–10 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1109/TII.2023.3241685
James, J.W., Lepora, N.F.: Slip detection for grasp stabilization with a multifingered tactile robot hand. IEEE Trans. Rob. 37(2), 506–519 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1109/TRO.2020.3031245
Lambeta, M., et al.: Digit: a novel design for a low-cost compact high-resolution tactile sensor with application to in-hand manipulation. IEEE Robot. Autom. Lett. 5(3), 3838–3845 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1109/LRA.2020.2977257
Li, H., Wu, X.J.: Densefuse: a fusion approach to infrared and visible images. IEEE Trans. Image Process. 28(5), 2614–2623 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1109/TIP.2018.2887342
Lin, Y., Cheng, T., Zhong, Q., Zhou, W., Yang, H.: Dynamic spatial propagation network for depth completion. In: Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, vol. 36, pp. 1638–1646 (2022)
Liu, S.Q., Adelson, E.H.: Gelsight fin ray: incorporating tactile sensing into a soft compliant robotic gripper. In: 2022 IEEE 5th International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft), pp. 925–931 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1109/RoboSoft54090.2022.9762175
Liu, S.Q., Yañez, L.Z., Adelson, E.H.: Gelsight endoflex: a soft endoskeleton hand with continuous high-resolution tactile sensing. In: 2023 IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft), pp. 1–6 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1109/RoboSoft55895.2023.10122053
Ma, D., Donlon, E., Dong, S., Rodriguez, A.: Dense tactile force estimation using gelslim and inverse fem. In: 2019 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 5418–5424 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1109/ICRA.2019.8794113
Ma, J., Xu, H., Jiang, J., Mei, X., Zhang, X.P.: Ddcgan: a dual-discriminator conditional generative adversarial network for multi-resolution image fusion. IEEE Trans. Image Process. 29, 4980–4995 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1109/TIP.2020.2977573
Shuangping, J., Bingbing, Y., Minhao, J., Yi, Z., Jiajun, L., Renhe, J.: Darkvisionnet: low-light imaging via RGB-NIR fusion with deep inconsistency prior. In: Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, vol. 36, pp. 1104–1112 (2022)
Singh, S., et al.: A review of image fusion: methods, applications and performance metrics. Digital Signal Process. 137, 104020 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dsp.2023.104020
Taylor, I.H., Dong, S., Rodriguez, A.: Gelslim 3.0: High-resolution measurement of shape, force and slip in a compact tactile-sensing finger. In: 2022 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 10781–10787 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1109/ICRA46639.2022.9811832
Wang, S., She, Y., Romero, B., Adelson, E.: Gelsight wedge: measuring high-resolution 3d contact geometry with a compact robot finger. In: 2021 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 6468–6475 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1109/ICRA48506.2021.9560783
Wang, Z., Wu, Y., Niu, Q.: Multi-sensor fusion in automated driving: a survey. IEEE Access 8, 2847–2868 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2962554
Wu, X.A., Huh, T.M., Sabin, A., Suresh, S.A., Cutkosky, M.R.: Tactile sensing and terrain-based gait control for small legged robots. IEEE Trans. Rob. 36(1), 15–27 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1109/TRO.2019.2935336
Xue, T., Wang, W., Ma, J., Liu, W., Pan, Z., Han, M.: Progress and prospects of multimodal fusion methods in physical human-robot interaction: a review. IEEE Sens. J. 20(18), 10355–10370 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1109/JSEN.2020.2995271
Yamaguchi, A., Atkeson, C.G.: Tactile behaviors with the vision-based tactile sensor fingervision. Int. J. Humanoid Rob. 16(03), 1940002 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1142/S0219843619400024
Yuan, W., Dong, S., Adelson, E.H.: Gelsight: high-resolution robot tactile sensors for estimating geometry and force. Sensors 17(12) (2017). https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/17/12/2762
Zamir, S.W., et al.: Learning enriched features for fast image restoration and enhancement. IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell. 45(2), 1934–1948 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1109/TPAMI.2022.3167175
Zhang, C., Cui, S., Cai, Y., Hu, J., Wang, R., Wang, S.: Learning-based six-axis force/torque estimation using gelstereo fingertip visuotactile sensing. In: 2022 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp. 3651–3658 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS47612.2022.9981100
Zhang, G., Du, Y., Yu, H., Wang, M.Y.: Deltact: a vision-based tactile sensor using a dense color pattern. IEEE Robot. Autom. Lett. 7(4), 10778–10785 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1109/LRA.2022.3196141
Zhao, Z., Xu, S., Zhang, C., Liu, J., Zhang, J.: Bayesian fusion for infrared and visible images. Signal Process. 177, 107734 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sigpro.2020.107734
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Guangdong University Engineering Technology Research Center for Precision Components of Intelligent Terminal of Transportation Tools (Project No. 2021GCZX002), and Guangdong HUST Industrial Technology Research Institute, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Digital Manufacturing Equipment.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this paper
Cite this paper
Lin, Y. et al. (2023). GelSplitter: Tactile Reconstruction from Near Infrared and Visible Images. In: Yang, H., et al. Intelligent Robotics and Applications. ICIRA 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 14273. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-6498-7_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-6498-7_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-99-6497-0
Online ISBN: 978-981-99-6498-7
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)