The Foundation for Tactile Robots: Approaching the Holistic Analysis of a Robot’s Force Sensing Capabilities
Kirschner, Robin Jeanne Siegner, Sebastian Karacan, Kübra Haddadin, Sami
Kirschner, Robin Jeanne
Siegner, Sebastian
Karacan, Kübra
Haddadin, Sami
Supervisor
Department
Robotics
Embargo End Date
Type
Conference proceeding
Date
2025
License
Language
English
Collections
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Abstract
Contact estimation and force sensing are fundamental requirements for sensitive manipulation and safe physical human-robot interaction. The robot controllers that enable these functions rely on accurate and precise sensing. The performance of external force estimation is influenced by the design of the robot’s sensory system. And similar to how humans prefer specific arm configurations for performing precise and delicate tasks, e.g., drawing a thin, straight line, robots also have "sweet spots" that allow for the most accurate performance of tasks based on their sensing capabilities. To fully exploit a robot’s proprioceptive force sensing, it is essential to provide robot integrators, designers, and simulations with knowledge about these optimal settings including factors such as joint configurations, temperatures, and many more. This paper first investigates which of these factors are most relevant and how they can be best measured and based on that introduces force sensing error maps as a tool for structured research on robot force sensing performance and future developments of tactile robot applications. We first investigate the factors influencing the force sensing performance of 7-degree-of-freedom robots on the example of a Kinova Gen3 and then derive 2-dimensional Cartesian force sensing error maps for this robot, an LWR iiwa 14, and a Franka Emika robot. These maps enable comparison of robot sensing capabilities, revealing patterns and weak spots to guide application design toward more tactile areas.
Citation
R. J. Kirschner, S. Siegner, K. Karacan and S. Haddadin, "The Foundation for Tactile Robots: Approaching the Holistic Analysis of a Robot’s Force Sensing Capabilities," 2025 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Hangzhou, China, 2025, pp. 8902-8909, doi: 10.1109/IROS60139.2025.11246184.
Source
Proceedings of the 2025 International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)
Conference
International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)
Keywords
Temperature measurement, Temperature sensors, Temperature distribution, Accuracy, Force measurement, Force, Estimation, Robot sensing systems, Sensors, Robots
Subjects
Source
International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)
Publisher
IEEE