DexiTac: Soft Dexterous Tactile Gripping

Grasping objects - whether they are flat, round, or narrow and whether they have regular or irregular shapes - introduces difficulties in determining the ideal grasping posture, even for the most state-of-the-art grippers. In this article, we presented a reconfigurable pneumatic gripper with fingers that could be set in various configurations, such as hooking, supporting, closuring, and pinching. Each finger incorporates a dexterous joint, a rotating joint, and a customized plug-and-play visuotactile sensor, the DigiTac-v1.5, to control manipulation in real time. We propose a tactile kernel density manipulation strategy for simple and versatile control, including detecting grasp stability, responding to disturbances, and guiding dexterous manipulations. We develop a double closed-loop control system that separately focuses on secure grasping and task management, demonstrated with tasks that highlight the previous capabilities. The gripper is relatively easy to fabricate and customize, offering a promising and extensible way to combine soft dexterity and tactile sensing for diverse applications in robotic manipulation.