In this paper, we present a methodology that uses an optical tactile sensor for efficient tactile exploration of embedded objects within soft materials. The methodology consists of an exploration phase, where a probabilistic estimate of the location of the embedded objects is built using a Bayesian approach. The exploration phase is then followed by a mapping phase which exploits the probabilistic map to reconstruct the underlying topography of the workspace by sampling in more detail regions where there is expected to be embedded objects. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the method, we tested our approach on an experimental setup that consists of a series of quartz beads located underneath a polyethylene foam that prevents direct observation of the configuration and requires the use of tactile exploration to recover the location of the beads. We show the performance of our methodology using ten different configurations of the beads where the proposed approach is able to approximate the underlying configuration. We benchmark our results against a random sampling policy.

翻译：本文提出了一种利用光学触觉传感器对软质材料内部嵌入式物体进行高效触觉探索的方法。该方法包含两个阶段：首先通过贝叶斯方法构建嵌入式物体位置的概率估计进行探索，随后利用概率图对预期存在嵌入式物体的区域进行精细化采样，重构工作空间底层拓扑结构。为验证方法有效性，我们在聚乙烯泡沫下方放置石英珠序列的实验装置上进行了测试——该泡沫阻碍直接观测配置，需通过触觉探索恢复珠体位置。采用十种不同珠体配置验证了所提方法对底层配置的逼近能力，并将结果与随机采样策略进行了对比基准测试。