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This paper introduces NLiPsCalib, a novel calibration framework for curved visuotactile sensors that addresses the challenge of non-uniform illumination degrading reconstruction accuracy. By integrating controllable near-field light sources and leveraging Near-Light Photometric Stereo (NLiPs), the framework simplifies calibration to a few contacts with everyday objects, eliminating the need for specialized indenters and large-scale data collection. Experimental results on a custom sensor, NLiPsTac, demonstrate high-fidelity 3D reconstruction across diverse curved form factors with this simplified calibration procedure.
Unlock high-fidelity 3D reconstruction for curved visuotactile sensors with just a few simple contacts, thanks to a new physics-consistent calibration framework.
Recent advances in visuotactile sensors increasingly employ biomimetic curved surfaces to enhance sensorimotor capabilities. Although such curved visuotactile sensors enable more conformal object contact, their perceptual quality is often degraded by non-uniform illumination, which reduces reconstruction accuracy and typically necessitates calibration. Existing calibration methods commonly rely on customized indenters and specialized devices to collect large-scale photometric data, but these processes are expensive and labor-intensive. To overcome these calibration challenges, we present NLiPsCalib, a physics-consistent and efficient calibration framework for curved visuotactile sensors. NLiPsCalib integrates controllable near-field light sources and leverages Near-Light Photometric Stereo (NLiPs) to estimate contact geometry, simplifying calibration to just a few simple contacts with everyday objects. We further introduce NLiPsTac, a controllable-light-source tactile sensor developed to validate our framework. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach enables high-fidelity 3D reconstruction across diverse curved form factors with a simple calibration procedure. We emphasize that our approach lowers the barrier to developing customized visuotactile sensors of diverse geometries, thereby making visuotactile sensing more accessible to the broader community.
