The TacTip Family: Soft Optical Tactile Sensors with 3D-Printed Biomimetic Morphologies

TLDR

Tactile sensing is essential for human‑robot interaction and object manipulation, and soft sensors enhance safety and gripping performance. The study introduces the TacTip family, a set of soft optical tactile sensors with diverse morphologies produced via dual‑material 3D printing. The sensors use a biomimetic design that transduces surface deformation through pin movement, mimicking the intermediate ridges of a human fingertip. The TacTip sensors achieve sub‑millimeter accuracy on a rolling‑cylinder task—over ten‑fold super‑resolution—and, with an open‑source version available, are ready for real‑world tactile perception, exploration, and manipulation, fostering further research in soft tactile sensing.

Abstract

Tactile sensing is an essential component in human-robot interaction and object manipulation. Soft sensors allow for safe interaction and improved gripping performance. Here we present the TacTip family of sensors: a range of soft optical tactile sensors with various morphologies fabricated through dual-material 3D printing. All of these sensors are inspired by the same biomimetic design principle: transducing deformation of the sensing surface via movement of pins analogous to the function of intermediate ridges within the human fingertip. The performance of the TacTip, TacTip-GR2, TacTip-M2, and TacCylinder sensors is here evaluated and shown to attain submillimeter accuracy on a rolling cylinder task, representing greater than 10-fold super-resolved acuity. A version of the TacTip sensor has also been open-sourced, enabling other laboratories to adopt it as a platform for tactile sensing and manipulation research. These sensors are suitable for real-world applications in tactile perception, exploration, and manipulation, and will enable further research and innovation in the field of soft tactile sensing.