DexiTac: Soft Dexterous Tactile Gripping

chenghua lu, Kailuan Tang, Max Yang, Haoran Li, Tianqi Yue, Nathan F. Lepora

Keywords: Grasping, dexterous manipulation, visuotactile sensing

Abstract: Grasping objects—whether they are flat, round, or narrow and whether they have regular or irregular shapes—introduces difficulties in determining the ideal grasping posture, even for the most state-of-the-art grippers. In this paper, we presented a reconfigurable pneumatic gripper with fingers that could be set in various configurations, such as hooking, supporting, closuring, and pinching. We propose a tactile kernel density manipulation strategy for simple and versatile control, including detecting grasp stability and guiding dexterous manipulations. The gripper is relatively easy to fabricate and customize, offering a promising and extensible way to combine soft dexterity and tactile sensing for diverse applications in robotic manipulation.

Submission Number: 23