Launch of innovative vision-based tactile robot hand
人とロボットの可能性を広げ
社会システムをアップデートする
Unlocking the full potential of humans working in tandem with robots
to elicit transformative changes in society
Unlocking the potential of humans and robots, updating systems in society.
The mission of FingerVision Inc. is to expand the availability and usability of robots and machines in our real society by leveraging vision-based tactile sensing, which is a university-launched technology, to resolve various social issues.
Core technology
Vision-based tactile sensor
We are a university-launched start-up, whose core technology is the concept of “estimating tactile sensation based on an image (captured by a camera).”
The FingerVision sensor consists of elastic and transparent skin and an embedded camera. Installing it onto fingertips of a robot hand, the robot can perceive “multimodal” tactile sensation, such as force and slip distributions. This technology enables robots to manipulate objects as a human hand does.
Features of the Sensor
マルチモダリティ
Multimodality
From the sequence of images captured by the camera, the sensor can obtain not only force distribution data (direction of x, y and z) but also other several modalities including slip distribution, object distance, location, pose, size, shape, texture, weight, foreign substance, etc. The high-resolution camera captures more precise distribution of force and slip than other kinds of tactile sensors. The key driver to enhance the performance is located in the software, which means the user can flexibly update the performance as needed.
安価
Economic
As information source for tactile sensing is based on images captured by the camera, the mechanism of the hardware fabricating the sensor is so simple that production cost is low and economical. This sensor can be attached to an ordinary robot arm, so choosing a less expensive arm will reduce the cost for implementation much more.
高耐久
Heavy duty!Physically robust and easy to repair
External force is absorbed by the skin, physically isolated from its electrical part (i.e., the camera), so it’s highly durable in principle. Even if the skin part is damaged, it’s inexpensive to replace it.