Robotic sensing is a subarea of

robotics Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrat ...

science intended to give

robot A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the control may be embedded within. Robots may be ...

s sensing capabilities. Robotic sensing mainly gives robots 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 uses algorithms that require environmental feedback or sensory data.

Vision

Method

The visual sensing system can be based on anything from the traditional

camera A camera is an optical instrument that can capture an image. Most cameras can capture 2D images, with some more advanced models being able to capture 3D images. At a basic level, most cameras consist of sealed boxes (the camera body), with ...

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 on o ...

, and

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" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The ...

to the new technology

radio frequency identification Radio-frequency identification (RFID) uses electromagnetic fields to automatically identify and track tags attached to objects. An RFID system consists of a tiny radio transponder, a radio receiver and transmitter. When triggered by an electroma ...

(RFID), which transmits radio signals to a tag on an object that emits back an identification code. 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. Algorithm based on

wavelet transform In mathematics, a wavelet series is a representation of a square-integrable ( real- or complex-valued) function by a certain orthonormal series generated by a wavelet. This article provides a formal, mathematical definition of an orthonormal ...

for fusing images of different spectra and different foci improves image quality. Robots can gather more accurate information from the resulting improved image.

Usage

Visual sensors help robots to identify the surrounding and take appropriate action. Robots analyze the image of the immediate environment imported from the visual sensor. The result is compared to the ideal intermediate or end image, so that appropriate movement 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 In physiology, the somatosensory system is the network of neural structures in the brain and body that produce the perception of touch (haptic perception), as well as temperature (thermoception), body position ( proprioception), and pain. It ...

, and wearable or robotic sensing of many hazardous substances and

pathogens In biology, a pathogen ( el, πάθος, "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 ger ...

, and a multilayer tactile sensor

hydrogel A hydrogel is a crosslinked hydrophilic polymer that does not dissolve in water. They are highly absorbent yet maintain well defined structures. These properties underpin several applications, especially in the biomedical area. Many hydrogels ar ...

-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, and ...

, 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 algor ...

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 change the motion of an object. A force can cause an object with mass to change its velocity (e.g. moving from a state of rest), i.e., to accelerate. Force can also be described intuitively as a ...

, 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 mechanical stress. The word '' ...

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 mechanical stress. The word '' ...

to transform force to

voltage Voltage, also known as electric pressure, electric tension, or (electric) potential difference, is the difference in electric potential between two points. In a static electric field, it corresponds to the work needed per unit of charge to ...

, so that the

vibration Vibration is a mechanical phenomenon whereby oscillations occur about an equilibrium point. The word comes from Latin ''vibrationem'' ("shaking, brandishing"). The oscillations may be periodic, such as the motion of a pendulum—or random, su ...

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 Voice activity detection (VAD), also known as speech activity detection or speech detection, is the detection of the presence or absence of human speech, used in speech processing. The main uses of VAD are in speech coding and speech recognition. I ...

(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 e ...

.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. Acoustic and

linguistic Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

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 In physics, energy (from Ancient Greek: ἐνέργεια, ''enérgeia'', “activity”) is the quantitative property that is transferred to a body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of work and in the form of ...

* Pitch *

Spectrum A spectrum (plural ''spectra'' or ''spectrums'') is a condition that is not limited to a specific set of values but can vary, without gaps, across a continuum. The word was first used scientifically in optics to describe the rainbow of colors ...

* 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 nu ...

Linguistic feature

* Bag of words * Part-of-speech * Higher

semantics Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...

* 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, in the molecular scale,

nano-robots Nanoid robotics, or for short, nanorobotics or nanobotics, is an emerging technology field creating machines or robots whose components are at or near the scale of a nanometer (10−9 meters). More specifically, nanorobotics (as opposed to m ...

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 66.0 (tetramer) kDa protein purified from the bacterium '' Streptomyces avidinii''. Streptavidin homo-tetramers have an extraordinarily high affinity for biotin (also known as vitamin B7 or vitamin H). With a dissociation ...

molecule as an inert body and three

catalytic Catalysis () is the process of increasing the rate of a chemical reaction by adding a substance known as a catalyst (). Catalysts are not consumed in the reaction and remain unchanged after it. If the reaction is rapid and the catalyst recyc ...

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

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 f ...

. 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 In biology, optimality models are a tool used to evaluate the costs and benefits of different organismal features, traits, and characterist ...

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

Manhattan metric A taxicab geometry or a Manhattan geometry is a geometry whose usual distance function or metric of Euclidean geometry is replaced by a new metric in which the distance between two points is the sum of the absolute differences of their Cartesian co ...

. 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 ''cybernetic'' and ''organism''—is a being with both organic and biomechatronic body parts. The term was coined in 1960 by Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline.

humans such as being able to "see" more of the electromagnetic spectrum such as

ultraviolet Ultraviolet (UV) is a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelength from 10 nm (with a corresponding frequency around 30 PHz) to 400 nm (750 THz), shorter than that of visible light, but longer than X-rays. UV radiation ...

and with higher fidelity and granularity, but may also be able have more senses such as sensing of magnetic fields ( magnetoreception) 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 Processing is a free graphical library and integrated development environment (IDE) built for the electronic arts, new media art, and visual design communities with the purpose of teaching non-programmers the fundamentals of computer programming ...

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 combinati ...

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

gesture recognition Gesture recognition is a topic in computer science and language technology with the goal of interpreting human gestures via mathematical algorithms. It is a subdiscipline of computer vision. Gestures can originate from any bodily motion or sta ...

and integration of interpretative abstract knowledge.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Robotic Sensing

Vision

Method

Image processing

Usage

Touch

Robot skin

Types and examples

Tactile discrimination

Signal processing

Usage

Hearing

Signal processing

Usage

Acoustic feature

Linguistic feature

Olfaction

Taste

Motion perception

Usage

Performance

Non-human senses

Collective sensing and sensemaking

See also

References

External links