Abstract
We introduce a method for generalizing tactile features across different orientations and locations, inspired by recent studies demonstrating tactile generalization in humans. This method is applied to two 3d-printed bioinspired optical tactile sensors. Internal pins acting as taxels are arranged with rotational and translational symmetry in these sensors. By rotating or translating a small sample of tactile images, we are able to generalize tactile stimuli to new orientations or locations along the sensor respectively. Applying these generalization methods in combination with active perception leads to the natural formation of a fovea of accurate real tactile data surrounded by moderately less accurate generalized data used to focus the sensor’s tactile perception.
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Acknowledgment
We thank Sam Coupland, Gareth Griffiths and Samuel Forbes for their assistance with 3d-printing. BWC was supported by an EPSRC DTP studentship and NL was supported in part by an EPSRC grant on ‘Tactile Superresolution Sensing’ (EP/M02993X/1).
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© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
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Ward-Cherrier, B., Cramphorn, L., Lepora, N.F. (2016). Exploiting Symmetry to Generalize Biomimetic Touch. In: Lepora, N., Mura, A., Mangan, M., Verschure, P., Desmulliez, M., Prescott, T. (eds) Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems. Living Machines 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9793. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42417-0_59
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42417-0_59
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