Tactile sensing in mobile robots remains under-explored, mainly due to challenges related to sensor integration and the complexities of distributed sensing. In this work, we present a tactile sensing architecture for mobile robots based on wheel-mounted acoustic waveguides. Our sensor architecture enables tactile sensing along the entire circumference of a wheel with a single active component: an off-the-shelf acoustic rangefinder. We present findings showing that our sensor, mounted on the wheel of a mobile robot, is capable of discriminating between different terrains, detecting and classifying obstacles with different geometries, and performing collision detection via contact localization. We also present a comparison between our sensor and sensors traditionally used in mobile robots, and point to the potential for sensor fusion approaches that leverage the unique capabilities of our tactile sensing architecture. Our findings demonstrate that autonomous mobile robots can further leverage our sensor architecture for diverse mapping tasks requiring knowledge of terrain material, surface topology, and underlying structure.

翻译：移动机器人的触觉感知仍是一个研究不足的领域，主要面临传感器集成难题以及分布式感知复杂性等挑战。本文提出一种基于车轮安装式声学波导的移动机器人触觉感知架构。该传感器架构仅需一个现成的声学测距仪作为单一有源组件，即可实现车轮整周触觉感知。研究结果表明：安装于移动机器人车轮上的该传感器能够区分不同地形、检测并分类不同几何形状的障碍物，以及通过接触定位实现碰撞检测。我们还将该传感器与移动机器人传统传感器进行对比，并指出可借助本触觉感知架构独特能力实现传感器融合方法的潜力。本研究证明，自主移动机器人可进一步利用该传感器架构，完成需要获取地形材质、表面拓扑结构及底层结构信息的多类地图构建任务。