A miniaturised neuromorphic tactile sensor integrated with an anthropomorphic robot hand

Restoring tactile sensation is essential to enable in-hand manipulation and the smooth, natural control of upper-limb prosthetic devices. Here we present a platform to contribute to that long-term vision, combining an anthropomorphic robot hand (QB SoftHand) with a neuromorphic optical tactile sensor (neuroTac). Neuromorphic sensors aim to produce efficient, spike-based representations of information for bio-inspired processing. The development of this 5-fingered, sensorized hardware platform is validated with a customized mount allowing manual control of the hand. The platform is demonstrated to succesfully identify 4 objects from the YCB object set, and accurately discriminate between 4 directions of shear during stable grasps. This platform could lead to wide-ranging developments in the areas of haptics, prosthetics and telerobotics.