Download or read book High resolution Tactile Sensing for Robotic Perception written by Wenzhen Yuan (Ph. D.) and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why is it so difficult for the present-day robots to act intelligently in the real-world environment? A major challenge lies in the lack of adequate tactile sensing technologies. Robots need tactile sensing to understand the physical environment, and detect the contact states during manipulation. A recently developed high-resolution tactile sensor, GelSight, which measures detailed information about the geometry and traction field on the contact surface, shows substantial potential for extending the application of tactile sensing in robotics. The major questions are: (1) What physical information is available from the high-resolution sensor? (2) How can the robot interpret and use this information? This thesis aims at addressing the two questions above. On the one hand, the tactile feedback helps robots to interact better with the environment, i.e., perform better exploration and manipulation. I investigate various techniques for detecting incipient slip and full slip during contact with objects, which helps a robot to grasp them securely. On the other hand, tactile sensing also helps a robot to better understand the physical environment. That can be reflected in estimating the material properties of the surrounding objects. I will present my work on using tactile sensing to estimate the hardness of arbitrary objects, and making a robot autonomously explore the comprehensive properties of common clothing. I also show our work on the unsupervised exploration of latent properties of fabrics through cross-modal learning with vision and touch.

Download or read book Robotic Tactile Sensing written by Ravinder S. Dahiya and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-07-29 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Future robots are expected to work closely and interact safely with real-world objects and humans alike. Sense of touch is important in this context, as it helps estimate properties such as shape, texture, hardness, material type and many more; provides action related information, such as slip detection; and helps carrying out actions such as rolling an object between fingers without dropping it. This book presents an in-depth description of the solutions available for gathering tactile data, obtaining aforementioned tactile information from the data and effectively using the same in various robotic tasks. The efforts during last four decades or so have yielded a wide spectrum of tactile sensing technologies and engineered solutions for both intrinsic and extrinsic touch sensors. Nowadays, new materials and structures are being explored for obtaining robotic skin with physical features like bendable, conformable, and stretchable. Such features are important for covering various body parts of robots or 3D surfaces. Nonetheless, there exist many more hardware, software and application related issues that must be considered to make tactile sensing an effective component of future robotic platforms. This book presents an in-depth analysis of various system related issues and presents the trade-offs one may face while developing an effective tactile sensing system. For this purpose, human touch sensing has also been explored. The design hints coming out of the investigations into human sense of touch can be useful in improving the effectiveness of tactile sensory modality in robotics and other machines. Better integration of tactile sensors on a robot’s body is prerequisite for the effective utilization of tactile data. The concept of semiconductor devices based sensors is an interesting one, as it allows compact and fast tactile sensing systems with capabilities such as human-like spatio-temporal resolution. This book presents a comprehensive description of semiconductor devices based tactile sensing. In particular, novel Piezo Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor (POSFET) based approach for high resolution tactile sensing has been discussed in detail. Finally, the extension of semiconductors devices based sensors concept to large and flexile areas has been discussed for obtaining robotic or electronic skin. With its multidisciplinary scope, this book is suitable for graduate students and researchers coming from diverse areas such robotics (bio-robots, humanoids, rehabilitation etc.), applied materials, humans touch sensing, electronics, microsystems, and instrumentation. To better explain the concepts the text is supported by large number of figures.

Download or read book Tactile Sensing Skill Learning and Robotic Dexterous Manipulation written by Qiang Li and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2022-04-02 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tactile Sensing, Skill Learning and Robotic Dexterous Manipulation focuses on cross-disciplinary lines of research and groundbreaking research ideas in three research lines: tactile sensing, skill learning and dexterous control. The book introduces recent work about human dexterous skill representation and learning, along with discussions of tactile sensing and its applications on unknown objects’ property recognition and reconstruction. Sections also introduce the adaptive control schema and its learning by imitation and exploration. Other chapters describe the fundamental part of relevant research, paying attention to the connection among different fields and showing the state-of-the-art in related branches. The book summarizes the different approaches and discusses the pros and cons of each. Chapters not only describe the research but also include basic knowledge that can help readers understand the proposed work, making it an excellent resource for researchers and professionals who work in the robotics industry, haptics and in machine learning. Provides a review of tactile perception and the latest advances in the use of robotic dexterous manipulation Presents the most detailed work on synthesizing intelligent tactile perception, skill learning and adaptive control Introduces recent work on human’s dexterous skill representation and learning and the adaptive control schema and its learning by imitation and exploration Reveals and illustrates how robots can improve dexterity by modern tactile sensing, interactive perception, learning and adaptive control approaches

Download or read book High resolution Tactile Sensing for Reactive Robotic Manipulation written by Siyuan Dong (Ph. D.) and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis explores tactile sensing to enable reactive behavior in robotic manipulation. More specifically, we focus on developing high-resolution vision-based tactile sensing hardware, perceptual algorithms, and controller designs for robotic manipulation. Tactile sensing plays a key role in human manipulation. However, the existing artificial tactile sensors have multiple limitations in terms of form factor, robustness, and sparse measurement. Tactile sensors are rarely integrated into the current robotic manipulation systems. In this thesis, we design new vision-based tactile sensors that capture the contact surface with high-resolution images and reconstruct the 3D geometry of the contact surface. We first design a variation of the GelSight sensor that improves the accuracy of the depth map reconstruction. To further optimize the form factor and enhance the robustness, we designed another vision-based tactile sensor, GelSlim, which keeps the high-resolution sensing output but has a slimmer former, sharper tip, and improved robustness. Based on the new sensor, we propose algorithms to distill useful contact information from the raw signal output. The key challenge is connecting the contact geometry directly observed from the raw image to contact signals that have meanings in the context of contact mechanics, e.g., contact forces, contact slip. We use an algorithm to track the gel deformation and compare it with a rigid body motion to detect incipient slip. We deploy an inverse Finite Element Method (iFEM) to reconstruct the contact force distribution. Finally, we explore how the tactile signals can be fed into the control loop in real manipulation tasks. We choose 2 representative contact rich manipulation tasks that benefit from tactile control: cable following and object insertion. We implement cable following by sensing & controlling both the state of the grasp of the cable and its configuration in realtime to allow smooth sliding of the fingers along a cable. We train a general tactile-based RL insertion policy in an end-to-end fashion to align the object pose with the insertion hole and keep sticking contact of the grasp by detecting incipient slip during the contact exploration. The RL insertion policy is capable of inserting novel objects, for which we show that tactile feedback is more informative than force-torque feedback.

Download or read book Tactile Sensors for Robotic Applications written by Salvatore Pirozzi and published by MDPI. This book was released on 2021-03-17 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book covers different aspects: - Innovative technologies for tactile sensors development - Tactile data interpretation for control purposes - Alternative sensing technologies - Multi-sensor systems for grasping and manipulation - Sensing solutions for impaired people

Download or read book Advanced Tactile Sensing for Robotics written by H.R. Nicholls and published by World Scientific Publishing Company Incorporated. This book was released on 1992-01-01 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Advanced robot systems require sensory information to enable them to make decisions and to carry out actions in a versatile, autonomous way. Humans make considerable use of information derived through touch, and an emerging domain of robot sensing is tactile sensing. This book considers various aspects of tactile sensing, from sensor hardware design through to the use of tactile data in exploratory situations using a multi-fingered robot hand. Both introductory material and new research results are presented, providing detailed coverage of the subject. Applications from assembly automation to dextrous manipulation are examined, and a particular theme is the relevance of biological touch to robotic tactile sensing. The integration of these topics into a single volume make the book essential reading for all those interested in robotic sensing. Contents: Introduction to Tactile SensingTactile Sensor DesignsProcessing and Using Tactile Sensor Data "(H R Nicholls)"Planar Elasticity for Tactile Sensing "(R S Fearing)"Integrating Tactile Sensors — ESPRIT 278 "(Z G Rzepczynski)"Distributed Touch Sensing "(H R Nicholls & N W Hardy)"The Human Tactile System "(L Moss-Salentijn)"Lessons from the Study of Biological Touch for Robotic Tactile Sensing "(S J Lederman & D T Pawluck)"Lessons from the Study of Biological Touch for Robotic Haptic Sensing "(S J Lederman et al.)"Object Recognition Using Active Tactile Sensing "(P K Allen)"Experiments in Active Haptic Perception with the Utah-MIT Dextrous Hand "(P K Allen et al.)"Future Trends in Tactile Sensing "(H R Nicholls)"Appendix — Basic Linear Elasticity "(R S Fearing)" Readership: Computer scientists and engineers.

Download or read book Robotic Tactile Perception and Understanding written by Huaping Liu and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-03-20 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book introduces the challenges of robotic tactile perception and task understanding, and describes an advanced approach based on machine learning and sparse coding techniques. Further, a set of structured sparse coding models is developed to address the issues of dynamic tactile sensing. The book then proves that the proposed framework is effective in solving the problems of multi-finger tactile object recognition, multi-label tactile adjective recognition and multi-category material analysis, which are all challenging practical problems in the fields of robotics and automation. The proposed sparse coding model can be used to tackle the challenging visual-tactile fusion recognition problem, and the book develops a series of efficient optimization algorithms to implement the model. It is suitable as a reference book for graduate students with a basic knowledge of machine learning as well as professional researchers interested in robotic tactile perception and understanding, and machine learning.

Download or read book Robot Tactile Sensing written by R. Andrew Russell and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work introduces tactile sensing for those engaged in advanced, sensor-based robotics, with special reference to problems of addressing arrays of sensor elements. It describes tactile sensors to register contact, surface profile, thermal properties and other tactile sensing modes. The use of robot manipulators to provide mobility for tactile sensors, and techniques for applying tactile sensing in robotic manipulation and recognition tasks are also covered. The various applications of this technology are discussed, and robot hands and grips are detailed.

Download or read book Robotic Touch for Contact Perception written by Lin, Xi and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tactile perception subserves the impressive dexterity found in humans but also found in their robotic counterparts. Recently, a new wave of tactile sensors relying on off-the-shelf cameras, provide a dense tactile image of the contact. However, by the way these sensors operate, the link between the mechanics of the skin and the tactile images is not evident. In this thesis, we present a novel camera-based tactile sensor, named ChromaTouch, which captures physically-driven dense images of the three-dimensional interaction that happens at the interface between the artificial skin and the touched object. The sensor measures the strain field induced by the contact, by imaging the pattern and color change of two overlapping markers array, one translucent and yellow and the other opaque and magenta. The motif seen by the camera is a bijective function of the relative motion of the markers allowing a reconstruction of the stress and strain field at the interface. The sensor, boasting up to 441 sensing elements, shows high robustness to external luminosity and camera resolution, and it is able to estimate the local coefficient of friction of the contact surface with one simple press. A hemispherical version extended the results to arbitrary shapes and is able to estimate the local curvature via a simple press using Hertz contact theory. Sensing the dense 3d deformation field at the contact opens the doors to a comprehensive, physically-based measurement of the interaction. Improved artificial perception of the object and of the interaction can inform robotic exploration, dexterous grasping and manipulation.

Download or read book Towards Dependable Robotic Perception written by Anna V. Petrovskaya and published by Stanford University. This book was released on 2011 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reliable perception is required in order for robots to operate safely in unpredictable and complex human environments. However, reliability of perceptual inference algorithms has been poorly studied so far. These algorithms capture uncertain knowledge about the world in the form of probabilistic belief distributions. A number of Monte Carlo and deterministic approaches have been developed, but their efficiency depends on the degree of smoothness of the beliefs. In the real world, the smoothness assumption often fails, leading to unreliable perceptual inference results. Motivated by concrete robotics problems, we propose two novel perceptual inference algorithms that explicitly consider local non-smoothness of beliefs and adapt to it. Both of these algorithms fall into the category of iterative divide-and-conquer methods and hence scale logarithmically with desired accuracy. The first algorithm is termed Scaling Series. It is an iterative Monte Carlo technique coupled with annealing. Local non-smoothness is accounted for by sampling strategy and by annealing schedule. The second algorithm is termed GRAB, which stands for Guaranteed Recursive Adaptive Bounding. GRAB is an iterative adaptive grid algorithm, which relies on bounds. In this case, local non-smoothness is captured in terms of local bounds and grid resolution. Scaling Series works well for beliefs with sharp transitions, but without many discontinuities. GRAB is most appropriate for beliefs with many discontinuities. Both of these algorithms far outperform the prior art in terms of reliability, efficiency, and accuracy. GRAB is also able to guarantee that a quality approximation of the belief is produced. The proposed algorithms are evaluated on a diverse set of real robotics problems: tactile perception, autonomous driving, and mobile manipulation. In tactile perception, we localize objects in 3D starting with very high initial uncertainty and estimating all 6 degrees of freedom. The localization is performed based on tactile sensory data. Using Scaling Series, we obtain highly accurate and reliable results in under 1 second. Improved tactile object localization contributes to manufacturing applications, where tactile perception is widely used for workpiece localization. It also enables robotic applications in situations where vision can be obstructed, such as rescue robotics and underwater robotics. In autonomous driving, we detect and track vehicles in the vicinity of the robot based on 2D and 3D laser range finders. In addition to estimating position and velocity of vehicles, we also model and estimate their geometric shape. The geometric model leads to highly accurate estimates of pose and velocity for each vehicle. It also greatly simplifies association of data, which are often split up into separate clusters due to occlusion. The proposed Scaling Series algorithm greatly improves reliability and ensures that the problem is solved within tight real time constraints of autonomous driving. In mobile manipulation, we achieve highly accurate robot localization based on commonly used 2D laser range finders using the GRAB algorithm. We show that the high accuracy allows robots to navigate in tight spaces and manipulate objects without having to sense them directly. We demonstrate our approach on the example of simultaneous building navigation, door handle manipulation, and door opening. We also propose hybrid environment models, which combine high resolution polygons for objects of interest with low resolution occupancy grid representations for the rest of the environment. High accuracy indoor localization contributes directly to home/office mobile robotics as well as to future robotics applications in construction, inspection, and maintenance of buildings. Based on the success of the proposed perceptual inference algorithms in the concrete robotics problems, it is our hope that this thesis will serve as a starting point for further development of highly reliable perceptual inference methods.

Download or read book Informative Touch for Intelligent Soft Robots written by Benjamin Shih and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As robots grow increasingly prevalent in real-world environments, sensory systems capable of sensing complex deformations and environmental interactions are needed for robust control. Soft robotics has emerged as a field of study that seeks to replace rigid components in traditional robots with materials that are compliant. It has garnered interest for real-world applications due to intrinsic safety embedded at the material level, deformable materials capable of shape and behavioral changes, and conformable physical contact for manipulation.-Yet, with the introduction of soft and stretchable materials to robotic systems comes a myriad of challenges for sensor integration, including multi-modal sensing capable of stretching, embedment of high-resolution but large-area sensor arrays, and sensor fusion with an increasing volume of data. This dissertation describes the design, fabrication, and data processing of soft, tactile sensor skins, with the ultimate goal of enhancing future collaborative robots that will work alongside and physically interact with people with a human-like sense of touch. This thesis focuses on how the integration of soft sensor skins and machine learning enables soft robots to perceive physical interaction for complex haptic tasks. Part 1 on Soft Sensors (Chapters 2, 3, and 4) presents the design and fabrication of various types of soft strain sensors, using compliant materials such as silicones and polymers. Fabrication methods include soft lithography and 3D printing. Performance of the sensors are characterized and modeled. Part 2 on Soft Robot Perception (Chapters 5 and 6) describes how machine learning can be used to augment the performance of soft sensors and actuators. The method demonstrates how recurrent neural networks can be used for graceful degradation and learned perception of external contacts and forces despite not having a priori information about the individual sensors. Part 3 on Social Touch for Physical Human-Robot Interaction (Chapters 7 and 8) analyzes the use of the liquid metal sensors as robotic skins for the classification of affective (social) touch and builds towards the development of a framework for representing physical contact, for use at the human-robot interaction layer of abstraction. In recent years, the concept of soft-bodied robots has rapidly grown in popularity. Researchers have developed many interesting forms of actuation that more closely mimic the functionality and capabilities found in nature. The next step for the field is to develop biologically-inspired tactile sensing for soft-bodied robots that can safely interact with and explore their environments. In the short term, the field can focus on deployable, high-resolution sensor skins, algorithms for processing the dense sensor information, and reliable feedback control for soft robots. Building upon the fundamental work presented in this dissertation, the future consists of robots that can touch and feel with the sensitivity and perception of natural systems.

Download or read book Touching is Believing written by and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 95 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For robots to perform advanced manipulation in a world of unknowns, touch is a critical source of information, and a high-quality tactile sensor is essential. However, existing tactile sensors generally are low-resolution and/or non-compliant, making it difficult to capture detailed contact information for manipulation that humans are very good at. GelSight was first developed a few years ago to capture micro-scale surface topography and converts pressure patterns to images, making it promising for high-quality tactile sensing. However, the original devices were big, relatively slow, and expensive for robotic applications. In this work, we developed a new tactile sensor based on GelSight, which we call fingertip GelSight sensor, that is much more compact, faster and less expensive. Despite that, the fingertip sensor has high resolution, on the order of tens of microns, high compliance and high sensitivity. We demonstrated its unparalleled capabilities as a new-generation robotic fingertip for manipulation, in terms of localization and manipulation of small parts, normal and shear force estimation, and slip detection, as well as for material recognition, in terms of 3D surface texture classification. With image processing and machine learning techniques applied on the tactile images obtained, the fingertip GelSight sensor opens many possibilities for robotic manipulation that would otherwise be difficult to perform.

Download or read book Advanced Tactile Sensing For Robotics written by Howard R Nicholls and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 1992-12-10 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Advanced robot systems require sensory information to enable them to make decisions and to carry out actions in a versatile, autonomous way. Humans make considerable use of information derived through touch, and an emerging domain of robot sensing is tactile sensing. This book considers various aspects of tactile sensing, from hardware design through to the use of tactile data in exploratory situations using a multi-fingered robot hand.In the first part of the book, the current state of progress of tactile sensing is surveyed, and it is found that the field is still in an early stage of development. Next, some fundamental issues in planar elasticity, concerning the interaction between tactile sensors and the environment, are presented. Having established how the basic data can be derived from the sensors, the issues of what form tactile sensors should take, and how they should be used, are considered. This is particularly important given the infancy of this field. The human tactile system is examined, and then biological touch and its implications for robotics is looked at. Some experiments in dextrous manipulation using a robot hand are described, which apply some of these results. The integration of tactile sensors into a complete system is also considered, and another, novel, approach for using touch sensing in a flexible assembly machine is described.Both basic material and new research results are provided in this book, thus catering to different levels of readers. The chapters by world experts in different aspects of the field are integrated well into one volume. The editor and authors have produced a thorough and in-depth survey of all work in robot tactile sensing, making the book essential reading for all researchers in this emergent field.

Download or read book Design and Control of an Anthropomorphic Robot Finger with Multi point Tactile Sensation written by Jessica Lauren Banks and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 95 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Robotic Tactile Sensors for Changing Contact Conditions written by Tae Myung Huh and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, robots have increasingly operated in a range of relatively unstructured environments, from outdoor agricultural operations to a cluttered kitchen in the home. As robots operate in these environments, they interact through continuously changing contact conditions between their hands and feet and the surfaces they touch. Toward allowing robots to respond to changing contact conditions, this thesis presents new tactile sensors for three particularly challenging scenarios: small running robots that need to sense changing contact conditions at their feet; grippers that employ gecko-inspired adhesion and need to sense how the adhesion is changing; and frictional grippers that use controlled sliding for manipulation. In each case, the sensing solution is informed by models of the contacts and how they can change. The first application focuses on leg-ground contacts for small running robots. Although legs are more complicated than wheels, legged robots are gradually growing in popularity due to their agility and versatility on various outdoor terrains. For best performance in terms of speed, efficiency and robust operation, legged robots should be equipped with sensors on their feet to monitor ground reaction forces and contact locations, so that they can account for how these affect running dynamics. However, it has been challenging to implement force sensors on the legs of small running robots because of the scale and geometry. To tackle this challenge, I developed a flexible capacitive force sensor array that measures distributed normal forces and a shear force. The sensor is mounted on the compliant C-shaped feet of a small hexapod robot and provides information about the ground reaction forces, contact locations, and overall gait smoothness and stability. Using the sensor information, I demonstrate two adaptive gait control methods that achieve improved running in terrain transitions and that reduce trajectory disturbances arising from obstacle contacts. Secondly, this thesis addresses robots that rely on adhesion, especially gecko-inspired adhesion. Grippers with astrictive force capabilities, such as suction or adhesion, adhere to an object surface even in with the negative grasp forces, allowing to them handle challenging objects such as large flat tiles and large curved objects that they cannot enclose. Among the various astrictive forces, gecko-inspired adhesion enjoys recent attention for its controllability: it is activated simply by applying a shear force and releases when the shear force is relaxed. However, measuring the adhesion is difficult because it depends on the area of contact formed by microscopic fibrillar structures and a surface. To tackle this challenge, I devised two direct contact area sensors for a gecko-adhesive gripper by using guided Lamb wave sensing and capacitive near-field proximity sensing. The former is relatively insensitive to the material of the adherend surface; the latter provides a high spatial resolution, which is useful for small grippers. In both approaches, I show that the sensor response matches the real contact area of the microscopic fibrillar structures sticking to a surface. Using these sensors, the robot can monitor contact area changes during a grasping process and evaluate the gripping quality before a failure occurs. Lastly, this thesis considers tactile sensing for in-hand manipulation with sliding. In this type of contact, multimodal sensors are necessary to simultaneously monitor steady force interactions and dynamic contact events. This information is useful both for stable gripping under varying load and for manipulation with respect to a hand. However, it has been challenging to build a compact multimodal sensor with a large taxel array that can be sampled rapidly for detecting directional dynamic events such as linear or rotational sliding. To address this challenge, I devised a capacitive nib array sensor that measures local stresses as well as directional sliding motions. The sensor rapidly samples the tactile array by dynamically clustering the sensing electrodes into groups that are selectively sensitive to certain types of directional sliding. Using this sensor, I demonstrate an in-hand sliding manipulation that measures changing sliding contacts and controls the grasp force to pivot an object lying on a table to an upright pose.

Download or read book Soft Round High Resolution Tactile Fingertip Sensors for Dexterous Robotic Manipulation written by Branden Robert Romero and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this work we introduce a non-planar soft high-resolution tactile sensor. An iteration of the GelSight sensors, it enables future GelSights to have more complicated form factors, such as a humanoid fingertip. To do this we introduce a novel method for achieving directional lighting along the entirety of a curved sensor using light piping. Light piping uses total internal reflection and a semi-specular membrane to constrain the path of the light inside the sensor until the sensing membrane is deformed. By using this new membrane and changing the geometry, we introduce a new bidirectional reflectance distribution function and new optics. This require new calibration procedures in the form of developing a fisheye projection model, and developing a neighborhood and location based continuous look-up table to map the relationship between RGB value and surface normal orientation of the membrane at a point. Finally we perform two dexterous manipulation task with feedback from the sensors in the form of controlled rolling of an object on a support surface, and lid removal off a jar. We also give instructions on how to manufacture the sensor as well as increasing the durability of the membrane for all GelSight sensors.

Download or read book Active Touch Sensing written by Robyn Grant and published by Frontiers E-books. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Active touch can be described as the control of the position and movement of tactile sensing systems to facilitate information gain. In other words, it is finding out about the world by reaching out and exploring—sensing by ‘touching’ as opposed to ‘being touched’. In this Research Topic (with cross-posting in both Behavioural Neuroscience and Neurorobotics) we welcomed articles from junior researchers on any aspect of active touch. We were especially interested in articles on the behavioral, physiological and neuronal underpinnings of active touch in a range of species (including humans) for submission to Frontiers in Behavioural Neuroscience. We also welcomed articles describing robotic systems with biomimetic or bio-inspired tactile sensing systems for publication in Frontiers in Neurorobotics.