Artificial haptic intelligence for human-machine systems

Veronica Santos

University of California, Los Angeles, California

Abstract

: The functionality of robotic manipulators could be enhanced by artificial "haptic intelligence" that enables the identification of object features via touch for semi-autonomous decision-making and/or display to a human operator. This could be especially useful when complementary sensory modalities, such as vision, are unavailable. I will highlight past and present work to enhance the functionality of artificial hands in human-machine systems. I will describe efforts to develop multimodal tactile sensor skins, and to teach robots how to haptically perceive salient geometric features such as edges, bumps, and pits using machine learning techniques. I will describe the use of reinforcement learning to teach robots goal-based policies that leverage prior experiences. Finally, I will describe current efforts to develop real-time capabilities for the perception of tactile directionality and for haptically locating objects buried in granular media. Real-time tactile perception and decision-making capabilities could be used to advance semi-autonomous robot systems and reduce the cognitive burden on human teleoperators of devices such as prosthetic hands, wheelchair-mounted arms, and robots for handling dangerous materials.

Biography

Veronica J. Santos is an Associate Professor in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Director of the UCLA Biomechatronics Lab (http://BiomechatronicsLab.ucla.edu). Dr. Santos received her B.S. in mechanical engineering with a music minor from the University of California, Berkeley, was a Quality and R&D Engineer at Guidant Corporation, and received her M.S. and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering with a biometry minor from Cornell University. As a postdoc at the University of Southern California, she contributed to the development of a bio-inspired tactile sensor for prosthetic hands. From 2008 to 2014, Dr. Santos was an Asst. Prof. of Mech. and Aero. Engin. at Arizona State University. Her research interests include human hand biomechanics, human-machine systems, haptics, tactile sensors, machine perception, prosthetics, and robotics for grasp and manipulation. She has co-edited a book titled, "The Human Hand as an Inspiration for Robot Hand Development." Dr. Santos was selected for a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, three engineering teaching awards, an ASU Young Investigator Award, and as a National Academy of Engineering Frontiers of Engineering Education Symposium participant. She has served as an Editor for the IEEE Intl Conference on Robotics and Automation and as an Associate Editor for the ASME Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics. Dr. Santos is currently the Editor-in-Chief for the 2020 IEEE Haptics Symposium and is an Associate Editor for the ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction.