The sense of touch is a property that allows humans to interact delicately with their physical environment. This article reports on a technological advancement in intuitive human-robot interaction that enables an intrinsic robotic sense of touch without the use of artificial skin or tactile instrumentation. On the basis of high-resolution joint-force-torque sensing in a redundant arrangement, we were able to let the robot sensitively feel the surrounding environment and accurately localize touch trajectories in space and time that were applied on its surface by a human. Through an intertwined combination of manifold learning techniques and artificial neural networks, the robot identified and interpreted those touch trajectories as machine-readable letters, symbols, or numbers. This opens up unexplored opportunities in terms of intuitive and flexible interaction between human and robot. Furthermore, we showed that our concept of so-called virtual buttons can be used to straightforwardly implement a tactile communication link, including switches and slider bars, which are complementary to speech, hardware buttons, and control panels. These interaction elements could be freely placed, moved, and configured in arbitrary locations on the robot structure. The intrinsic sense of touch we proposed in this work can serve as the basis for an advanced category of physical human-robot interaction that has not been possible yet, enabling a shift from conventional modalities toward adaptability, flexibility, and intuitive handling.

中文翻译：

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直观的物理人机交互的内在触觉


触觉是一种允许人类与物理环境进行微妙交互的属性。本文介绍了直观人机交互的技术进步，无需使用人工皮肤或触觉仪器即可实现机器人固有的触觉。在冗余布置的高分辨率关节力矩传感的基础上，我们能够让机器人敏感地感知周围环境，并准确定位人类施加在其表面的时空触摸轨迹。通过多种学习技术和人工神经网络的交织组合，机器人识别了这些触摸轨迹并将其解释为机器可读的字母、符号或数字。这在人与机器人之间直观和灵活的交互方面开辟了尚未开发的机会。此外，我们还表明，我们所谓的虚拟按钮概念可用于直接实现触觉通信链接，包括开关和滑块，它们与语音、硬件按钮和控制面板相辅相成。这些交互元素可以在机器人结构上的任意位置自由放置、移动和配置。我们在这项工作中提出的内在触觉可以作为尚不可能的高级物理人机交互类别的基础，从而从传统模式向适应性、灵活性和直观处理的转变。