Stanford Seminar - Improving Robotic Dexterity with Optical Tactile Sensor DenseTact

January 19, 2024 Won Kyung Do of Stanford University Dexterous manipulation, particularly of small everyday objects, remains a complex challenge in the field of robotics. In this talk, I will present two studies addressing these challenges with DenseTact, a soft optical tactile sensor. The first study introduces an innovative approach to inter-finger manipulation using a tactile sensor-equipped gripper. This development not only enhances grasping accuracy in cluttered environments but also facilitates improved manipulation and reorientation of small objects, enabling more precise classification. The second study addresses the challenges of grasping objects of varying sizes on flat surfaces. I will introduce the DenseTact-Mini, an optical tactile sensor featuring a soft, rounded, smooth gel surface, compact design, and a synthetic fingernail. This sensor enables the grasping of multi-scale objects using three distinct strategies for different sizes and masses of objects. This presentation will underscore how these advancements open new avenues in robotics, particularly in enhancing manipulation capabilities in complex scenarios where vision is limited due to occlusions. More about the speaker: https://arm.stanford.edu/people/wonkyung-do More about the course can be found here: https://stanfordasl.github.io/robotics_seminar/ View the entire AA289 Stanford Robotics and Autonomous Systems Seminar playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoROMvodv4rMeercb-kvGLUrOq4HR6BZD ► Check out the entire catalog of courses and programs available through Stanford Online: https://online.stanford.edu/explore