Towards a framework for tactile perception in social robotics

The first step for building reliable humanoid systems is to provide them with perceptual mechanisms that have human attributes, such as the skill development, social interaction, environmental embodiment and sensorial integration. Despite tactile perception being one of the most important elements for human interaction with the world, its implementation within artificial systems has been tardy, principally because it requires a complete integration with the motor systems and an environmental coupling to extract comprehensible information. Thus, this work aims to generate a platform based on haptic information, allowing humanoids to perceive and represent surrounding objects using concepts fully grounded in the sensorial data.