Sensor fusion with aspect information of visual and tactual sensing

Presents a method of sensor fusion with aspect information acquired with visual and tactile sensing. The sensor fusion system is made up on the geodesic dome for the visual and tactile sensing system. The visual sensing system discriminates a position and an orientation of the CCD camera on the geodesic dome. If an image acquired with the CCD camera is identified for the model images at the facet in the geodesic dome, the position and orientation of the camera corresponds with the facet on the geodesic dome. Then, the camera and object are represented with the geometrical relationships in the coordinated system. The tactual images are given with the tactile sensor which makes contact with the object surface at the touching direction of a finger. If the position and orientation of the hand are given, the tactile images on the finger are given with the estimation by computer simulation.