Reactive Slip Control in Multifingered Grasping: Hybrid Tactile Sensing and Internal-Force Optimization
Théo Ayral, Saifeddine ALOUI, Mathieu Grossard
AI summary
Problem
Multifingered robotic grasping struggles to recover from in-hand slip under unknown external disturbances without relying on unreliable friction models, direct force sensing, or prior object knowledge. Traditional reactive slip control often applies uniform force increases that disrupt object pose or require complex friction estimation.
Approach
The method decouples manipulation forces from internal forces, using hybrid piezoelectric and piezoresistive tactile sensors to detect slip and update contact geometry online, then optimizes internal-force distribution to reinforce friction margins while preserving the object-level wrench.
Key results
- Hybrid tactile pipeline enabling online grasp model updates without prior object knowledge
- Reactive internal-force controller stabilizing grasps under unknown perturbations without explicit friction modeling
- Slip onset detection latency of 20.4 ± 6 ms with theoretical grasp response latency of ~30 ms
- Grasp-model updates in under 5 ms and internal-force selection in ~4 ms for sub-50 ms tactile responses
Why it matters
Provides a scalable, model-free slip recovery mechanism for dexterous robots, enabling safer and more responsive manipulation in unstructured environments.
Abstract
We build a low-level reflex control layer driven by fast tactile feedback for multifinger grasp stabilization. Our hybrid approach combines learned tactile slip detection with model-based internal-force control to halt in-hand slip while preserving the object-level wrench. The multimodal tactile stack integrates piezoelectric sensing (PzE) for fast slip cues, and piezoresistive arrays (PzR) for contact localization, enabling online construction of a contact-centric grasp representation without prior object knowledge. Experiments demonstrate reac- tive stabilization of multifingered grasps under external pertur- bations, without explicit friction models or direct force sensing. In controlled trials, slip onset is detected after 20.4 ± 6 ms. The framework yields a theoretical grasp response latency on the order of 30 ms, with grasp-model updates in less than 5 ms and internal-force selection in about 4 ms. The analysis supports the feasibility of sub-50 ms tactile-driven grasp responses, aligned with human reflex baselines.