The TACTIP project addresses a number of robotics issues: the need for improved tactile sensors for robot manipulators and the creation of tactile probes for many applications. Tactile probes will need to function over a range of materials with different deformation properties. In particular, robots dealing cooperatively with humans and especially, robots required to touch humans (e.g. assistive care robots, co-operative assembly robots)  need improved tactile sensors. This project combines novel research work at BRL on compliant tactile sensing with our industrial robotics partners ELUMOTION to make a new design for a finger tip sensor which will augment the CORDIS listed ELU2 robot hand. Furthermore, a successful outcome will yield opportunities to exploit other (non-humanoid) robot systems, which need tactile sensing. The current (and incompletely designed) BRL tactile sensor is capable of detecting small edges and surface deformation and even a human pulse. However, it does need characterising against a set of performance metrics, which is part of the proposed experiment.

The current progress of the sensor is to benchmark the initial prototype and develope first stage algorithms to run on a desktop PC. This runs in parallel with the first stages to develop a small scale sensor.