MIT researchers have developed GelSight Svelte, a human finger-shaped tactile robot that utilizes two mirrors to reflect and refract light so that one camera, located in the base of the sensor, can see along the entire finger’s length. It was then used to build a robotic hand capable of grasping a heavy object just like a human would.
Optimizing the shape, angle, and curvature of the mirrors required the researchers to design software that simulated the reflection and refraction of light. The mirrors, camera, as well as two sets of LEDs for illumination were then attached to a plastic backbone and encased in a flexible skin made from silicone gel.
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Because our new sensor is human finger-shaped, we can use it to do different types of grasps for different tasks, instead of using pinch grasps for everything. There’s only so much you can do with a parallel jaw gripper. Our sensor really opens up some new possibilities on different manipulation tasks we could do with robots,” said Alan (Jialiang) Zhao, a mechanical engineering graduate student and lead author of a paper on GelSight Svelte.
