Robotic sensing is a subarea of

robotics Robotics is the interdisciplinary study and practice of the design, construction, operation, and use of robots. Within mechanical engineering, robotics is the design and construction of the physical structures of robots, while in computer s ...

science intended to provide sensing capabilities to

robot A robot is a machine—especially one Computer program, programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions Automation, automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the robot control, co ...

s. Robotic sensing provides robots with the ability to sense their environments and is typically used as feedback to enable robots to adjust their behavior based on sensed input. Robot sensing includes the ability to see,Roh SG, Choi HR (Jan 2009).
3-D Tag-Based RFID System for Recognition of Object
" IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering 6 (1): 55–65.Arivazhagan S, Ganesan L, Kumar TGS (Jun 2009).
A modified statistical approach for image fusion using wavelet transform
" Signal Image and Video Processing 3 (2): 137-144.Jafar FA, et al (Mar 2011).
An Environmental Visual Features Based Navigation Method for Autonomous Mobile Robots
" International Journal of Innovative Computing, Information and Control 7 (3): 1341-1355. touch,Anderson S, et al (Dec 2010).
Adaptive Cancelation of Self-Generated Sensory Signals in a Whisking Robot
" IEEE Transactions on Robotics 26 (6): 1065-1076.Kim YM, et al (Aug 2010)
A Robust Online Touch Pattern Recognition for Dynamic Human-robot Interaction
" IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics 56 (3): 1979-1987.Mazzini F, et al (Feb 2011).
Tactile Robotic Mapping of Unknown Surfaces, with Application to Oil Wells
" IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement 60 (2): 420-429. hearMatsumoto M, Hashimoto S (2010). "Internal Noise Reduction Using Piezoelectric Device under Blind Condition." Internatl (Jan 2011).
Searching for the most important feature types signalling emotion-related user states in speech
" Computer Speech and Language 25 (1): 4-28. and moveLund K, et al (May 2010).
Molecular robots guided by prescriptive landscapes
" Nature 465 (7295): 206-210.Trejos AL, et al (Sep 2009).
Robot-assisted Tactile Sensing for Minimally Invasive Tumor Localization
" International Journal of Robotics Research 28 (9): 1118-1133.Czyzowicz J, Labourel A, Pelc A (Jan 2011).
Optimality and Competitiveness of Exploring Polygons by Mobile Robots
" Information and Computation 209 (1): 74-88. and associated algorithms to process and make use of environmental feedback and sensory data. Robot sensing is important in applications such as

vehicular automation Vehicular automation is using technology to assist or replace the operator of a vehicle such as a car, truck, aircraft, rocket, military vehicle, or boat. Assisted vehicles are ''semi-autonomous'', whereas vehicles that can travel without a ...

, robotic prosthetics, and for industrial, medical, entertainment and educational robots.

Vision

Method

Visual sensing systems can be based on a variety of technologies and methods including the use of

camera A camera is an instrument used to capture and store images and videos, either digitally via an electronic image sensor, or chemically via a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. As a pivotal technology in the fields of photograp ...

sonar Sonar (sound navigation and ranging or sonic navigation and ranging) is a technique that uses sound propagation (usually underwater, as in submarine navigation) to navigate, measure distances ( ranging), communicate with or detect objects o ...

laser A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word ''laser'' originated as an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radi ...

and

radio frequency identification Radio-frequency identification (RFID) uses electromagnetic fields to automatically Automatic identification system, identify and Tracking system, track tags attached to objects. An RFID system consists of a tiny radio transponder called a tag, ...

(RFID) technology. All four methods aim for three procedures—sensation, estimation, and matching.

Image processing

Image quality Image quality can refer to the level of accuracy with which different imaging systems capture, process, store, compress, transmit and display the signals that form an image. Another definition refers to image quality as "the weighted combination of ...

is important in applications that require excellent robotic vision. Algorithms based on wavelet transform that are used for fusing images of different spectra and different

foci Focus (: foci or focuses) may refer to: Arts * Focus or Focus Festival, former name of the Adelaide Fringe arts festival in East Australia Film * ''Focus'' (2001 film), a 2001 film based on the Arthur Miller novel * ''Focus'' (2015 film), a 201 ...

result in improved image quality. Robots can gather more accurate information from the resulting improved image.

Usage

Visual sensors help robots to identify the surrounding environment and take appropriate action. Robots analyze the image of the immediate environment based on data input from the visual sensor. The result is compared to the ideal, intermediate or end image, so that appropriate movement or action can be determined to reach the intermediate or final goal.

Touch

Robot skin

Types and examples

Examples of the current state of progress in the field of robot skins as of mid-2022 are a robotic finger covered in a type of manufactured living human skin, an electronic skin giving biological

skin Skin is the layer of usually soft, flexible outer tissue covering the body of a vertebrate animal, with three main functions: protection, regulation, and sensation. Other animal coverings, such as the arthropod exoskeleton, have different ...

-like haptic sensations and touch/pain-sensitivity to a robotic hand, a system of an electronic skin and a human-machine interface that can enable remote sensed tactile perception, and wearable or robotic sensing of many hazardous substances and

pathogens In biology, a pathogen (, "suffering", "passion" and , "producer of"), in the oldest and broadest sense, is any organism or agent that can produce disease. A pathogen may also be referred to as an infectious agent, or simply a germ. The term ...

, and a multilayer

tactile sensor A tactile sensor is a device that measures information arising from physical interaction with its environment. Tactile sensors are generally modeled after the biological sense of cutaneous receptor, cutaneous touch which is capable of detect ...

hydrogel A hydrogel is a Phase (matter), biphasic material, a mixture of Porosity, porous and Permeation, permeable solids and at least 10% of water or other interstitial fluid. The solid phase is a water Solubility, insoluble three dimensional network ...

-based robot skin.

Tactile discrimination

Signal processing

Touch sensory signals can be generated by the robot's own movements. It is important to identify only the external tactile signals for accurate operations. Previous solutions employed the

Wiener filter In signal processing, the Wiener filter is a filter used to produce an estimate of a desired or target random process by linear time-invariant ( LTI) filtering of an observed noisy process, assuming known stationary signal and noise spectra, a ...

, which relies on the prior knowledge of signal statistics that are assumed to be stationary. Recent solution applies an

adaptive filter An adaptive filter is a system with a linear filter that has a transfer function controlled by variable parameters and a means to adjust those parameters according to an optimization algorithm. Because of the complexity of the optimization algorit ...

to the robot's logic. It enables the robot to predict the resulting sensor signals of its internal motions, screening these false signals out. The new method improves contact detection and reduces false interpretation.

Usage

Touch patterns enable robots to interpret human emotions in interactive applications. Four measurable features—

force In physics, a force is an influence that can cause an Physical object, object to change its velocity unless counterbalanced by other forces. In mechanics, force makes ideas like 'pushing' or 'pulling' mathematically precise. Because the Magnitu ...

, contact time, repetition, and contact area change—can effectively categorize touch patterns through the temporal decision tree classifier to account for the time delay and associate them to human emotions with up to 83% accuracy. The Consistency Index is applied at the end to evaluate the level of confidence of the system to prevent inconsistent reactions. Robots use touch signals to map the profile of a surface in hostile environment such as a water pipe. Traditionally, a predetermined path was programmed into the robot. Currently, with the integration of touch sensors, the robots first acquire a random data point; the algorithm of the robot will then determine the ideal position of the next measurement according to a set of predefined geometric primitives. This improves the efficiency by 42%. In recent years, using touch as a stimulus for interaction has been the subject of much study. In 2010, the robot seal PARO was built, which reacts to many stimuli from human interaction, including touch. The therapeutic benefits of such human-robot interaction is still being studied, but has shown very positive results.

Hearing

Signal processing

Accurate audio sensors require low internal noise contribution. Traditionally, audio sensors combine acoustical arrays and microphones to reduce internal noise level. Recent solutions combine also

piezoelectric Piezoelectricity (, ) is the electric charge that accumulates in certain solid materials—such as crystals, certain ceramics, and biological matter such as bone, DNA, and various proteins—in response to applied stress (mechanics), mechanical s ...

devices. These passive devices use the

piezoelectric effect Piezoelectricity (, ) is the electric charge that accumulates in certain solid materials—such as crystals, certain ceramics, and biological matter such as bone, DNA, and various proteins—in response to applied stress (mechanics), mechanical s ...

to transform force to

voltage Voltage, also known as (electrical) potential difference, electric pressure, or electric tension, is the difference in electric potential between two points. In a Electrostatics, static electric field, it corresponds to the Work (electrical), ...

, so that the

vibration Vibration () is a mechanical phenomenon whereby oscillations occur about an equilibrium point. Vibration may be deterministic if the oscillations can be characterised precisely (e.g. the periodic motion of a pendulum), or random if the os ...

that is causing the internal noise could be eliminated. On average, internal noise up to about 7 dB can be reduced. Robots may interpret strayed noise as speech instructions. Current voice activity detection (VAD) system uses the complex spectrum circle centroid (CSCC) method and a maximum signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)

beamformer Beamforming or spatial filtering is a signal processing technique used in sensor arrays for directional signal transmission or reception. This is achieved by combining elements in an antenna array in such a way that signals at particular angles ...

.Kim HD, et al (2009).
Target Speech Detection and Separation for Communication with Humanoid Robots in Noisy Home Environments
" Advanced Robotics 23 (15): 2093-2111. Because humans usually look at their partners when conducting conversations, the VAD system with two microphones enable the robot to locate the instructional speech by comparing the signal strengths of the two microphones. Current system is able to cope with background noise generated by televisions and sounding devices that come from the sides.

Usage

Robots can perceive emotions through the way we talk and associated characteristics and features. Acoustic and

linguistic Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

features are generally used to characterize emotions. The combination of seven acoustic features and four linguistic features improves the recognition performance when compared to using only one set of features.Batliner A, et al (Jan 2011).
Searching for the most important feature types signalling emotion-related user states in speech
" Computer Speech and Language 25 (1): 4-28.

Acoustic feature

* Duration *

Energy Energy () is the physical quantity, quantitative physical property, property that is transferred to a physical body, body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of Work (thermodynamics), work and in the form of heat and l ...

* Pitch *

Spectrum A spectrum (: spectra or spectrums) is a set of related ideas, objects, or properties whose features overlap such that they blend to form a continuum. The word ''spectrum'' was first used scientifically in optics to describe the rainbow of co ...

* Cepstral * Voice quality *

Wavelets A wavelet is a wave-like oscillation with an amplitude that begins at zero, increases or decreases, and then returns to zero one or more times. Wavelets are termed a "brief oscillation". A taxonomy of wavelets has been established, based on the n ...

Linguistic feature

Bag of words The bag-of-words (BoW) model is a model of text which uses an unordered collection (a "bag") of words. It is used in natural language processing and information retrieval (IR). It disregards word order (and thus most of syntax or grammar) but ca ...

Part-of-speech In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech ( abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are ...

* Higher

semantics Semantics is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction betwee ...

* Varia

Olfaction

Taste

For example, robot cooks may be able to taste food for dynamic cooking.

Motion perception

Usage

Automated robots require a guidance system to determine the ideal path to perform its task. However, at the molecular scale, nano-robots lack such guidance system because individual molecules cannot store complex motions and programs. Therefore, the only way to achieve motion in such environment is to replace sensors with chemical reactions. Currently, a molecular spider that has one

streptavidin Streptavidin is a 52 Atomic mass unit, kDa protein (tetramer) purified from the bacterium ''Streptomyces avidinii''. Streptavidin Homotetramer, homo-tetramers have an extraordinarily high affinity for biotin (also known as vitamin B7 or vitamin ...

molecule as an inert body and three

catalytic Catalysis () is the increase in reaction rate, rate of a chemical reaction due to an added substance known as a catalyst (). Catalysts are not consumed by the reaction and remain unchanged after it. If the reaction is rapid and the catalyst ...

legs is able to start, follow, turn and stop when came across different

DNA Deoxyribonucleic acid (; DNA) is a polymer composed of two polynucleotide chains that coil around each other to form a double helix. The polymer carries genetic instructions for the development, functioning, growth and reproduction of al ...

origami ) is the Japanese art of paper folding. In modern usage, the word "origami" is often used as an inclusive term for all folding practices, regardless of their culture of origin. The goal is to transform a flat square sheet of paper into a ...

. The DNA-based nano-robots can move over 100 nm with a speed of 3 nm/min. In a TSI operation, which is an effective way to identify tumors and potentially cancer by measuring the distributed pressure at the sensor's contacting surface, excessive force may inflict a damage and have the chance of destroying the tissue. The application of robotic control to determine the ideal path of operation can reduce the maximum forces by 35% and gain a 50% increase in accuracy compared to human doctors.

Performance

Efficient robotic exploration saves time and resources. The efficiency is measured by

optimality Optimality may refer to: * Mathematical optimization * Optimality theory in linguistics * Optimality model, approach in biology See also * * Optimism (disambiguation) * Optimist (disambiguation) * Optimistic (disambiguation) * Optimization (d ...

and competitiveness. Optimal boundary exploration is possible only when a robot has square sensing area, starts at the boundary, and uses the

Manhattan metric Taxicab geometry or Manhattan geometry is geometry where the familiar Euclidean distance is ignored, and the distance between two point (geometry), points is instead defined to be the sum of the absolute differences of their respective Cartesian ...

. In complicated geometries and settings, a square sensing area is more efficient and can achieve better competitiveness regardless of the metric and of the starting point.

Non-human senses

Robots may not only be equipped with higher sensitivity and capabilities per sense than all or most non-

cyborg A cyborg (, a portmanteau of ''cybernetics, cybernetic'' and ''organism'') is a being with both Organic matter, organic and biomechatronic body parts. The term was coined in 1960 by Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline.ultraviolet Ultraviolet radiation, also known as simply UV, is electromagnetic radiation of wavelengths of 10–400 nanometers, shorter than that of visible light, but longer than X-rays. UV radiation is present in sunlight and constitutes about 10% of ...

and with higher fidelity and granularity, but may also be able have more senses such as sensing of magnetic fields (

magnetoreception Magnetoreception is a sense which allows an organism to detect the Earth's magnetic field. Animals with this sense include some arthropods, molluscs, and vertebrates (fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals). The sense is mainly used ...

) or of various hazardous air components.

Collective sensing and sensemaking

Robots may share, store, and transmit sensory data as well as data based on such. They may learn from or interpret the same or related data in different ways and some robots may have remote senses (e.g. without local interpretation or processing or computation such as with common types of

telerobotics Telerobotics is the area of robotics concerned with the control of semi-autonomous robots from a distance, chiefly using television, wireless networks (like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and the Deep Space Network) or tethered connections. It is a combinatio ...

or with embedded or mobile "sensor nodes"). Processing of sensory data may include processes such as

facial recognition Facial recognition or face recognition may refer to: *Face detection, often a step done before facial recognition *Face perception, the process by which the human brain understands and interprets the face *Pareidolia, which involves, in part, seein ...

, facial expression recognition,

gesture recognition Gesture recognition is an area of research and development in computer science and language technology concerned with the recognition and interpretation of human gestures. A subdiscipline of computer vision, it employs mathematical algorithms to ...

and integration of interpretative abstract knowledge.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Robotic Sensing