Technology Overview
The SynTouch BioTac contains the three sensory modalities found in the human fingertip: force, vibration, and temperature.
Rollover the three sensing modalities to learn more:
The three sensing modalities of the BioTac. Click on the pictures to learn more about each.
In designing a sensor that follows these biological capabilities our own research team and collaborators have been able to do things that humans are able to do with touch, such as:
- Determine point of contact
- Estimate tri-axial forces
- Detect slip
- Estimate the radius of curvature of a contacted object
- Sense initial contact with an remarkably high sensitivity
- Discriminate edges, corners, and flat surfaces
- Discriminate textures
- Discriminate object compliance
- Discriminate objects based on their thermal properties
SynTouch, does not currently provide software to directly extract these features, but will be developing it in the near future. Examples of such applications can be found in the publications.