Abstract:
Breast cancer is one of the most common causes of mortality among women. Inspection
of lumps in the breasts by palpation is the key to early detection and leads
to a higher survival rate. Likewise, transferring an object between a robot and operator
is one of the milestone problems that can be solved with proposed prior-to-pass
classification-driven handover pipeline. Therefore, in this work, I present a flexible
fabric-based and soft wearable tactile glove interfaced to the Robot Operating System
(ROS) for detecting the lumps within custom-made breast prototypes and soft/rigid
object classification prior to handover. The glove can be donned by the human hand
or an anthropomorphic robot hand, and capable of measuring the force and mechanical
vibrations at the points of the contact and finger motions while squeezing the
breast models. Tactile glove incorporates 30 barometric pressure sensors with 1 kPa
accuracy, five proprioceptive sensors, and two accelerometers with 0.1 g accuracy.
The layered construction provides a pleasant look and protects the delicate wirings.