Sensate Skins for Robots
Cynthia Breazeal
Dan Stiehl
(S.M. MAS student)
Goal & Motivation
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Develop full-body skin for social robot
Leonardo
 Functions of skin and touch for human-robot
interaction (HRI)
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“Touch is our most
social sense”
Express
Sense
Protect
Communicate
Nurture
Jones & Yarborough
“Tactile needs do not seem to
change with aging---if anything
they seem to increase”
Ashley Montagu
Goal & Motivation

Investigate biologically
inspired algorithms for large
distributed sensor networks
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6
1.1x10 axons distributed
across surface
Efficient and quick processing of
multi-modal information
Elegant principles for multimodal integration
Biologically Inspired Approach
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Somatic Alphabet &
Hierarchical Organization
Model multiple types of
“receptors”
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WORLD
(people and things)
“Letters”
Joint Angle
(posture)
Touch, pain, temperature,
proprioception
FSR
(indentation)
Capacitive
(proximity)
Camera
(vision)
Multi-modal integration
based on primitives (Meredith & “Words”
Stein)
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Somatosensory (Hyvarinen et.
al.)
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Motor (Bizzi & Mussa-Ivaldi)
Visual (Jones & Palmer, Kruger et.
Motor Cortex
Neuron
(hard, soft,
curvature)
Somatosensory
Cortical Neuron
(orientation,
direction)
Visual
Processing
(Shape, Color,
Depth)
al.)
“Sentences”
“The Soft Red Ball is Rolling Down My Arm”
Milestones to Date
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Mechanical hands
with integrated
sensing &
computation
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Articulated fingers for
active touch
40 FSR, capacitive
sensing
Silicone skin glove
Milestones to Date
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Embedded Modular
Scalable sensing
network
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PIC16F876A 20MHz
Microprocessor
57600 baud serial
communication
Poll 64 sensors in 6ms.
Hierarchical
organization
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Distribute tactile sensors
over body regions
Based on somatopic map
Milestones to Date
Motion
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“Fleshing” out letters
and words of
somatosensory
alphabet
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Orientation
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Letters: model slowly and
rapidly adapting
mechanoreceptors (FSR)
Words: model population
based cortical processing
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Direction
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Centroid
Orientation
Direction of motion
Next Steps
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Apply alphabet to “sentences”
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Multi-sensor integration based on primitives
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Active touch for exploration and manipulation
Communicative touch for interaction with people
Add in vision, limb proprioception, movement primitives
Spread to other parts of body according to
cortical distribution
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Arms & Face