Tactile Sensing — Overview

This section collects notes on tactile sensing: how touch is transduced, measured, and used in perception and robotics.

Topics to cover

• Mechanoreceptors and the physiology of touch
• Tactile sensor technologies (capacitive, resistive, optical/GelSight-style)
• Contact mechanics and the Hertzian contact model
• Tactile signal processing and representation learning

A bit of contact mechanics

For a sphere of radius $R$ pressed into an elastic half-space, the Hertzian contact radius $a$ relates to the normal load $F$ by:

$$a = \left( \frac{3 F R}{4 E^*} \right)^{1/3}$$

where the effective modulus $E^*$ satisfies

$$\frac{1}{E^*} = \frac{1 - \nu_1^2}{E_1} + \frac{1 - \nu_2^2}{E_2}.$$

Inline math also works: the contact pressure peaks at $p_0 = \tfrac{3F}{2\pi a^2}$.

Next steps

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