Magnetic Tactile Sensor with Load Tolerance and Flexibility Using Frame Structures for Estimating Triaxial Contact Force Distribution of Humanoid

For humanoid whole body contact motions, it is important to recognize the existence of whole body contacts and the contact forces. The challenges in recognizing the existence of whole body contacts and the contact forces in life-size humanoids are: 1) the measurement part with low mechanical strength must be tolerant of high load and 2) it is difficult to model thick elastic bodies with high impact tolerance and uneven sensor placements when applied to various shapes of the whole body. This paper proposes a method of constructing a load tolerant tactile sensor by separating the loaded part from the measuring part with magnetism and protecting the measuring part inside the frame of the robot. For modeling dif- ficulties, this paper proposes learning the relationship between the change in the detected physical quantity due to deformation of the elastic body and the contact force distribution. This paper shows through experiments that the proposed tactile sensor based on a robot frame is load tolerant enough to support the weight of a life-sized humanoid, and that it can acquire contact force distribution and the robot is able to acclimate to external forces.