Abstract: The present disclosure provides methods, apparatuses, systems, and computer-readable mediums for classifying a region and an intensity of a contact. A method includes obtaining, from a plurality of acoustic sensors provided on an inner surface of a bumper of the apparatus, a combined acoustic signal, the combined acoustic signal being based on an input signal provided to the plurality of acoustic sensors, determining, using a trained machine learning model that has been trained with acoustic signals and corresponding position and intensity information of impacts on a plurality of regions of an outer surface of the bumper, the region of the contact on the bumper with respect to the plurality of regions and the intensity of the contact, based on the combined acoustic signal, and determining a motion of the apparatus based on the region of the contact, the intensity of the contact, and an operating mode of the apparatus.

Abstract: In some embodiments, an apparatus for performing reactive positioning of a robot gripper includes one or more fingers disposed on an end-effector of the robot, a signal processing circuit, a memory storing instructions, and a processor. Each of the one or more fingers includes a transducer configured to generate vibrational energy based on an input signal, and convert an acoustic reflection of the vibrational energy from an object into a voltage signal. The signal processing circuit is configured to provide the input signal to each transducer, and perform signal processing on the voltage signal of each transducer resulting in reflection data. The processor is configured to execute the instructions to perform pre-touch proximity detection on the reflection data, perform grasp positioning on the reflection data, perform contact detection from the reflection data, and provide, to the robot, results of the pre-touch proximity detection, the grasp positioning, and the contact detection.

Abstract: An apparatus for estimating a proximity direction of an obstacle includes an acoustic transmitter attached to a surface of the apparatus; a first acoustic receiver spaced apart from the surface of the apparatus; a second acoustic receiver spaced apart from the surface of the apparatus; and at least one processor configured to: control the acoustic transmitter to generate an acoustic wave along the surface; obtain first and second proximity direction signals based on first and second acoustic wave signals corresponding to the generated acoustic wave; and estimate a proximity direction of the obstacle with respect to the apparatus based on the first and second proximity direction signals.