Whisker-based Haptic Perception System for Branch Detection in Dense Vegetation
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Author / Producer
Date
2022-04-28
Publication Type
Conference Paper
ETH Bibliography
yes
Citations
Altmetric
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Rights / License
Abstract
Dense vegetation is an example of a structurally complex environment that robots encounter in many outdoor applications such as agriculture, environmental monitoring, or search and rescue. For a robot to safely navigate or perform manipulation tasks in dense vegetation, it is important to detect and distinguish rigid branches from the surrounding soft foliage. This task is challenging for traditional sensing approaches, such as vision, because the foliage can partially or totally occlude the branches. We present a haptic sensing system capable of detecting contact with the vegetation and locating branches occluded by soft foliage. The system follows a vision-based tactile sensing approach consisting of an array of compliant whiskers, with fiducial markers attached to them, and a camera to track their displacement. When the whiskers are inserted in the vegetation and the array is oscillated, rigid branches cause the whiskers to deflect significantly, while deflections caused by softer foliage are smaller. We developed a sampling strategy and a software pipeline to detect the location of the branches based on the deflection magnitude of the whiskers. Upon indoor and outdoor experiments with artificial and natural vegetation, we demonstrate the ability to locate branches among compliant foliage.
Publication status
published
Editor
Book title
2022 IEEE 5th International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft)
Journal / series
Volume
Pages / Article No.
911 - 918
Publisher
IEEE
Event
2022 IEEE 5th International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft 2022)
Edition / version
Methods
Software
Geographic location
Date collected
Date created
Subject
Robotics
Organisational unit
09718 - Mintchev, Stefano / Mintchev, Stefano
Notes
Conference lecture held on April 7, 2022
Funding
186865 - CYbER - CanopY Exploration Robots (SNF)