Metallic Ultrasound Waveguides as a Distributed Tactile Sensing Platform for Contact Localization, Force Estimation, and Material Class Discrimination

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2607.02827v1
• Date: Thu, 02 Jul 2026 23:38:15 GMT
• Title: Metallic Ultrasound Waveguides as a Distributed Tactile Sensing Platform for Contact Localization, Force Estimation, and Material Class Discrimination
• Abstract summary: Tactile sensing is central to how robotic systems interact with the real world, yet current solutions face a tradeoff between sensing area and system complexity.<n>This work investigates metallic ultrasound waveguides as distributed tactile sensors interrogated from a single transducer.
• Score: 38.422068800155365
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• Abstract: Tactile sensing is central to how robotic systems interact with the real world, yet current solutions face a tradeoff between sensing area and system complexity. This work investigates metallic ultrasound waveguides as distributed tactile sensors fully interrogated from a single proximal transducer. Using cylindrical indenters, we characterized the acoustic response to single and multi-point contacts with varying forces and contact materials. For single point indentation, the applied force was well captured by a linear relationship with the ratio of the reflection to transmission coefficients (F = a * R/T) across all nine tested materials (R2 >= 0.95). The calibration slope, a, correlated strongly with the material's effective contact modulus (log--log Pearson r=-0.98). The reflected energy partition was found to be a load-independent parameter related to the contacting material's properties, enabling material classification independent of force. For the two-indenter experiment, both contact forces were recovered from the waveguide signal and were in close agreement with reference load cell measurements (contact 1, R2 = 0.97; contact 2, R2=0.95). The approach was extended to two-dimensional metallic sheets, confirming both contact localization and material-dependent effects. Overall, these results validate metallic waveguides as a robust platform for distributed tactile sensing, providing contact localization, force estimation, and material-class discrimination for the contacting body.

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