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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Neurorobot.
Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnbot.2025.1503398
This article is part of the Research Topic Insights in Neurorobotics: 2023-2024 View all 9 articles

A Conceptual Approach to Material Detection Based on Damping Vibration-Force Signals via Robot

Provisionally accepted
Ahmad Saleh Asheghabadi Ahmad Saleh Asheghabadi 1Mohammad Keymanesh Mohammad Keymanesh 1*Saeed Bahrami Moqadam Saeed Bahrami Moqadam 2*Jing Xu Jing Xu 1*
  • 1 Tsinghua University, Beijing, Beijing, China
  • 2 Tongji University, Shanghai, Shanghai Municipality, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Object perception, particularly material detection, continues to be a serious problem for grasping dexterity via end-effectors. This paper presents a straightforward, impact-based approach to identify object materials, utilising the cantilever beam mechanism in the UR5e robot's artificial finger. To detect object material, an elastic metal sheet was fixed to a load cell with an accelerometer and a metal appendage positioned above and below its free end, respectively. After recording the damping force signal and vibration data from the load cell and accelerometer caused by the metal appendage's impact, features such as vibration amplitude, damping time, wavelength, and force amplitude were retrieved. Three machine-learning techniques were then used to classify the objects' materials according to their damping rates. Data clustering was performed using the deflection of the cantilever beam to boost classification accuracy. Online object materials detection shows an accuracy of 95.46% in a study of ten objects [metals (steel, cast iron), plastics (foam, compressed plastic), wood, silicon, rubber, leather, brick and cartoon]. This method overcomes the limitations of the tactile approach and has the potential to be used in industrial robots.

    Keywords: Cantilever beam mechanism, damping force signal and damping vibration, Material detection, Vibration amplitude, Damping time, wavelength, Cantilever beam's deflection

    Received: 28 Sep 2024; Accepted: 13 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Saleh Asheghabadi, Keymanesh, Bahrami Moqadam and Xu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Mohammad Keymanesh, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, Beijing, China
    Saeed Bahrami Moqadam, Tongji University, Shanghai, 200092, Shanghai Municipality, China
    Jing Xu, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, Beijing, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.