This is a hybrid event with in-person attendance in Levine 307 and virtual attendance via Zoom.

ABSTRACT

Touch is a crucial sensor modality in both humans and robots. Recent advances in tactile sensing hardware have resulted — for the first time — in the availability of mass-produced, high-resolution, inexpensive, and reliable tactile sensors. In this talk, I will argue for the importance of creating a new computational field of “Touch processing” dedicated to the processing and understanding of touch, similarly to what computer vision is for vision. This new field will present significant challenges both in terms of research and engineering. To start addressing some of these challenges, I will introduce our open-source ecosystem dedicated to touch sensing research. Finally, I will present some applications of touch in robotics and discuss other future applications.