IJHR

Guest Editors:

Qiang Li (CITEC/Bielefeld University,Germany)

Lorenzo Natale (iCub Facility/Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia(IIT),Italy)

Robert Haschke (CITEC/Bielefeld University,Germany)

Andrea Cherubini (LIRMM/Université de Montpellier, France)

Anh-Van Ho (Ryukoku Universtiy,Japan)

Helge Ritter (CITEC/Bielefeld University,Germany)

Motivation and Objectives

Tactile sensing technology has achieved tremendous progress in recent decades. Nowadays, advanced tactile sensors are available

• for covering large regions of the robot body (e.g. torso, arms, leg etc) and enabling manipulation with the whole-body

• for robot hands, to enhance dexterous manipulation capabilities

• in wearable devices, to facilitate neuro-scientific and physiological studies to deepen our understanding of sensori-motor control processes. However, the dexterous manipulation skills of robots are still lacking as compared to those of humans. Possible reasons are:

• Available sensors are limited with low temporal and spatial resolution compared to human's mechanoreceptors

• Tactile data processing algorithms need to be improved, via machine learning, to automatically extract significant features

• A generic and robust manipulation control framework incorporating strong sensori-motor feedback loops is still missing

Within this special issue, we will bring together experts from the different domains, including tactile hardware development, robot manipulation and machine learning, to discuss recent progress and remaining challenges in tactile-based robotic manipulation, and to draw a whole-scene picture of tactile perception in manipulation with harmonic mixture of multidisciplinary research.

All the submissions for this Special Issue will undergo the regular IJHR review process.

List of Topics

• Advanced anthropomorphic tactile sensor development and calibration

• Tactile display devices in teleoperation such as surgical robots

• Whole-body tactile-based manipulation and safety

• Deep learning and its applications to tactile sensing and control

• Tactile-driven exploration strategies

• Tactile-driven robot body / tool self-calibration(robot body schema)

• Tactile servoing and manipulation

• Tactile image and tactile object perception

• Tactile-based unknown object grasp and in-hand manipulations

• Using tactile for unknown object reconstruction, classification and slip detection

Submission Schedule

Submission deadline: 1st, March, 2017

Notification: 1st,May,2017

Final version due: 1st,June,2017

To appear in the issue of: Oct,2017 (tentative)