Sim-to-Real for Robotic Tactile Sensing via Physics-Based Simulation and Learned Latent Projections

Yashraj Narang,Balakumar Sundaralingam,Miles Macklin,Arsalan Mousavian,Dieter Fox,Yashraj Narang,Balakumar Sundaralingam,Miles Macklin,Arsalan Mousavian,Dieter Fox

Tactile sensing is critical for robotic grasping and manipulation of objects under visual occlusion. However, in contrast to simulations of robot arms and cameras, current simulations of tactile sensors have limited accuracy, speed, and utility. In this work, we develop an efficient 3D finite element method (FEM) model of the SynTouch BioTac sensor using an open-access, GPU-based robotics simulato...