BubbleTouch: A Quasi-Static Tactile Skin Simulator

Introduction

The tool is designed to generate noiseless tactile signals. A 3D object is approximated as a union of spheres, as shown: The resolution of the object model can be adjusted as desired.

Skin elements, taxels, are modeled as sping-damper systems, with a sphere contact model. A sensor array is a set of identical taxels. The array will deform the object is pushed onto it:

The simulator produces signals in taxel deformations, which can be converted to forces.

Citation

If our simulator is found useful in your work, please consider citing:

@article{hollis2018bubbletouch,  
  title={BubbleTouch: A Quasi-Static Tactile Skin Simulator},  
  author={Hollis, Brayden and Patterson, Stacy and Cui, Jinda and Trinkle, Jeff},  
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:1809.09153},  
  year={2018}  
}  

Installation

1. Download the repository.
2. Add all associated folders to MATLAB path.
3. "read_ply.m" function from MATLAB graph toolbox is required: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/5355-toolbox-graph/content/toolbox_graph/read_ply.m

Usage

An example script is provided. In this example, a 64 by 64 array is pressed against a drill for one second. Please see "example.m" in the root directory for more details.