IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - June 2013 - 107

Robotic Tactile Sensing:
Technologies and System
Ravinder S. Dahiya and Maruizio Valle,
Springer-Verlag, New York, 2013,
245 Pages.
his book focuses on tactile
sensing in robotics. Designing
a robotic system that can successfully and safely integrate
with human-centered society requires
careful attention to this topic. To be as
capable and aware of our environment
as we are, humans use tactile information at many levels. Removing or altering any feature of our tactile system
(through injury or disease) tends to
reduce our capabilities tremendously,
often severely impairing locomotion
or manipulation.
For example, there is a case described
in this book in which a patient lost most
of his sense of touch (all kinesthetic and
most cutaneous sensations) due to an
unfortunate neural disease, and he collapsed on the floor as a result when
attempting to stand, unable to control
his joints, often striking himself by accident. Considering that most robots have
little or no sense of touch, and certainly
nothing at the level of a human, we
begin to analyze why they are so limited
in capability (and why they have yet to
be successfully integrated into society as
service robots).
But how can we measure and process the massively complex and highdimensional tactile information? How
can this information be integrated into
control algorithms, and why should
we as designers even go through the
effort? This book offers insightful
answers to these and many other
related questions. It provides an excellent perspective on this complex topic,
bringing together hardware, theory,
design, and application seamlessly.
This book is composed of eight chapters and three appendices. In addition,
this book is broken into two parts: 1)
technologies and systems (Chapters
1-5) and 2) integrated tactile sensing
(Chapters 6-8). The authors created a
logical flow, beginning with careful
motivation in Chapter 1 as to why the

sense of touch is important, as well as
carefully defining touch and tactile sensing in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 provides an
overview of the physiology and neurophysiology of tactile sense in humans,
providing a motivation for the requirements laid out in Chapter 4. There are a
number of ways to measure tactile information, and Chapter 5 describes several
methods, including resistive, capacitive,
optical, magnetic, ultrasonic, and
piezoelectric measurement. Chapter 6
(the beginning of Part II) describes integrated tactile sensing on silicon, while
Chapters 7 and 8 describe piezoelectricoxide-semiconductor-field-effect-transistor-based tactile sensing chips. The
appendices offer reviews of the fundamentals of piezoelectricity, modeling of
piezoelectric polymers, and the design
of high-input-impedance charge/voltage
amplifiers suitable for these sensors.
There are many useful references provided at the end of each chapter, and the
index and table of contents are quite

helpful in navigating the information.
This book is clearly organized and well
developed.
Anyone could find this book very
informative and readable. At times,
there can be a high information density,
but there is quite a bit to go through. It
is not a heavily equation-based book,
which aids in the readability and flow.
This book can be useful as a reference, a
textbook, or for those looking to
expand their understanding of the current and future state of the art in robotic
tactile sensing. Overall, Robotic Tactile
Sensing: Technologies and System provides an excellent presentation of the
increasingly significant and rapidly
developing topic of providing the tactile
sense to robots.
-Reviewed by
Alex Simpkins, Ph.D.,
San Diego, California

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2013.2255515
Date of publication: 6 June 2013

june 2013

IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

107

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - June 2013