Blind Tactile Exploration for Surface Reconstruction

Abstract

Accurate 3d reconstruction capturing the fine details of an object's shape is essential for tasks such as automated assembly, inspection, and quality control. While monocular cameras provide broad visual structure but often miss critical surface details and depth accuracy in underexposed or occluded environments. Tactile sensors offer precise, localized depth information, capturing fine textures, yet exploring varied curvature surfaces with only tactile input remains challenging. To address this, the paper proposes a blind surface exploration method for convex objects using a set of sequential controllers to efficiently guide the manipulator's interaction with surfaces featuring sharp edge changes. This approach ensures precise tactile exploration, leading to highly detailed surface reconstruction. With the controller employed, the algorithm was able to move along the surface while maintaining contact along normal and reconstruct the object with IoU as high as <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\mathbf{9 1 \%}$</tex> for objects with sharp edges.