Measurement of 3D shape parameters for hand-eye cooperation system by fusing tactual and visual data

This paper proposes methods of fusing tactual and visual data for a hand-eye cooperation system, and realizes the methods using a developed tactile sensor. Since tactual and visual data convey information with different characteristics, smart fusion of these two sensor data is expected to provide useful additional information. In this paper, visually identified edges and planar regions or edges from tactual data are utilized and three fusion methods are introduced (1) measurement of a 3D edge when a tactile sensor contacts a plane, (2) measurement of a 3D edge when a tactile sensor contacts a plane at the edge and (3) measurements of a cylinder when a tactile sensor contacts the cylinder at an edge.