Open AccessAction Augmentation of Tactile Perception for Soft-Body Palpation
Author(s) -
Luca Scimeca,
Josie Hughes,
Perla Maiolino,
Liang He,
Thrishantha Nanayakkara,
Fumiya Iida
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
soft robotics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.998
H-Index - 40
eISSN - 2169-5180
pISSN - 2169-5172
DOI - 10.1089/soro.2020.0129
Subject(s) - palpation , action (physics) , soft materials , perception , soft tissue , soft robotics , computer science , human–computer interaction , medicine , artificial intelligence , robot , psychology , radiology , neuroscience , nanotechnology , physics , materials science , quantum mechanics
Medical palpation is a diagnostic technique in which physicians use the sense of touch to manipulate the soft human tissue. This can be done to enable the diagnosis of possibly life-threatening conditions, such as cancer. Palpation is still poorly understood because of the complex interaction dynamics between the practitioners' hands and the soft human body. To understand this complex of soft body interactions, we explore robotic palpation for the purpose of diagnosing the presence of abnormal inclusions, or tumors. Using a Bayesian framework for training and classification, we show that the exploration of soft bodies requires complex, multi-axis, palpation trajectories. We also find that this probabilistic approach is capable of rapidly searching the large action space of the robot. This work progresses "robotic" palpation, and it provides frameworks for understanding and exploiting soft body interactions.