3D Printer Based Open Source Calibration Platform for Whisker Sensors

Liyou Zhou, Omar Ali, Soumo Emmanuel Arnaud, Eden Attenborough, Jacob Swindell, George Davies, Charles Fox

Abstract: Whisker sensors have been an area of active research in recent years for their interesting use cases in tactile robotics and mammal physiology research. Several attempts have been made to develop open-source versions of the sensor to promote wider adoption. However, the existing calibration solutions for these sensors are highly proprietary, cost-prohibitive and error-prone. In this paper, we present a low-cost open-source calibration and testing platform for whisker sensors based on an off-the-shelf 3D printer. We demonstrate its effectiveness by calibrating a whisker sensor for radial contact distance inference. All artefacts of the design are open-sourced and are fully reproducible.