Robotic Tactile Sensing

Reviews / Votes

Ravinder S. Dahiya and Maruizio Valle, Springer-Verlag, New York, 2013, 245 Pages. This book focuses on tactile sensing in robotics. Designing a robotic system that can successfully and safely integrate with human-centered society requires careful attention to this topic. To be as capable and aware of our environment as we are, humans use tactile information at many levels. Removing or altering any feature of our tactile system (through injury or disease) tends to reduce our capabilities tremendously, often severely impairing locomotion or manipulation.

For example, there is a case described in this book in which a patient lost most of his sense of touch (all kinesthetic and most cutaneous sensations) due to an unfortunate neural disease, and he collapsed on the floor as a result when attempting to stand, unable to control his joints, often striking himself by accident. Considering that most robots have little or no sense of touch, and certainly nothing at the level of a human, we begin to analyze why they are so limited in capability (and why they have yet to be successfully integrated into society as service robots).

But how can we measure and process the massively complex and highdimensional tactile information? How can this information be integrated into control algorithms, and why should we as designers even go through the effort? This book offers insightful answers to these and many other related questions. It provides an excellent perspective on this complex topic, bringing together hardware, theory, design, and application seamlessly.

This book is composed of eight chapters and three appendices. In addition, this book is broken into two parts: 1) technologies and systems (Chapters 1-5) and 2)integrated tactile sensing (Chapters 6-8). The authors created a logical flow, beginning with careful motivation in Chapter 1 as to why the sense of touch is important, as well as carefully defining touch and tactile sensing in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 provides an overview of the physiology and neurophysiology of tactile sense in humans, providing a motivation for the requirements laid out in Chapter 4. There are a number of ways to measure tactile information, and Chapter 5 describes several methods, including resistive, capacitive, optical, magnetic, ultrasonic, and piezoelectric measurement. Chapter 6 (the beginning of Part II) describes integrated tactile sensing on silicon, while Chapters 7 and 8 describe piezoelectricoxide- semiconductor-field-effect-transistor- based tactile sensing chips. The appendices offer reviews of the fundamentals of piezoelectricity, modeling of piezoelectric polymers, and the design of high-input-impedance charge/voltage amplifiers suitable for these sensors. There are many useful references provided at the end of each chapter, and the index and table of contents are quite helpful in navigating the information. This book is clearly organized and well developed.

Anyone could find this book very informative and readable. At times, there can be a high information density, but there is quite a bit to go through. It is not a heavily equation-based book, which aids in the readability and flow. This book can be useful as a reference, a textbook, or for those looking to expand their understanding of the current and future state of the art in robotic tactile sensing. Overall, Robotic Tactile Sensing: Technologies and System provides an excellent presentation of the increasingly significant and rapidly developing topic of providing the tactile sense to robots.

-Reviewed by
Alex Simpkins,Ph.D., San Diego, California
June 2013 IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE