Liquids and granular media are pervasive throughout human environments, yet remain particularly challenging for robots to sense and manipulate precisely. In this work, we present a systematic approach at integrating capacitive sensing within robotic end effectors to enable robust sensing and precise manipulation of liquids and granular media. We introduce the parallel-jaw RoboCAP Gripper with embedded capacitive sensing arrays that enable a robot to directly sense the materials and dynamics of liquids inside of diverse containers, including some visually opaque. When coupled with model-based control, we demonstrate that the proposed system enables a robotic manipulator to achieve state-of-the-art precision pouring accuracy for a range of substances with varying dynamics properties. Code, designs, and build details are available on the project website.

翻译：液体和颗粒介质广泛存在于人类环境中，但机器人对其的感知与精确操控仍面临显著挑战。本研究提出了一种将电容传感系统集成至机器人末端执行器的系统方法，以实现对液体和颗粒介质的鲁棒感知与精确操控。我们设计了配备嵌入式电容传感阵列的平行夹爪式RoboCAP夹持器，使机器人能够直接感知不同类型容器（包括部分不透光容器）内液体的材料属性及动力学特性。结合基于模型的控制器，该机器人系统在多种具有不同动力学特性的物质倾倒任务中达到了当前最优的精确倾倒精度。相关代码、设计方案及制作细节已发布于项目网站。