Vibrotactile Sensing for Detecting Misalignments in Precision Manufacturing

Abstract

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) often struggle with automating high-mix, low-volume (HMLV) manufacturing due to the inflexibility and high cost of traditional automation solutions. This paper presents a novel approach to robotic manipulation for HMLV environments that leverages vibrotactile sensing. We propose integrating vibrotactile sensors, which capture subtle vibrations and acoustic signals, to provide real-time feedback during manipulation tasks. This approach enables the robot to detect subtle misalignments, which can assist in refining vision-based policies and improving the robot’s overall manipulation skills. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this method in several representative insertion tasks, showing how vibrotactile feedback can be used to predict success or failure of an insertion task as well as predict initial contact between an object grasped in-hand and the placement location. Our results suggest that vibrotactile sensing offers a promising pathway towards more robust and adaptable robotic systems that can better empower SMEs to embrace automation.