Systems and methods for determining pose of objects held by flexible end effectors

A robot comprising:

• a flexible end effector comprising one or more flexible fingers, each one of the one or more flexible fingers defined by a flexible internal side member;
• one or more curvature sensors positioned to sense a curvature of each one of the one or more flexible fingers and generate curvature data corresponding to the curvature;
• one or more tactile sensors positioned adjacent to each one of the one or more flexible fingers, the one or more tactile sensors configured to sense a location of one or more deformations of the flexible internal side member caused by a contact between the flexible end effector and an object held by the flexible end effector and generate tactile data corresponding to the location of the one or more deformations;
• and
• a computing device communicatively coupled to the one or more curvature sensors and the one or more tactile sensors, the computing device programmed to determine the pose of the object held by the flexible end effector by generating continuous data from the curvature data and the tactile data and feeding the continuous data to a pose estimation algorithm.

A robot comprising:

• a robot arm comprising a flexible end effector having a plurality of flexible fingers, each one of the plurality of flexible fingers defined by a flexible internal side member;
• one or more curvature sensors positioned to sense a curvature of each one of the plurality of flexible fingers and generate curvature data corresponding to the curvature;
• one or more tactile sensors positioned adjacent to each one of the plurality of flexible fingers, the one or more tactile sensors configured to sense a location of one or more deformations of the flexible internal side member caused by a contact between the flexible end effector and an object held by the flexible end effector and generate tactile data corresponding to the location of the one or more deformations;
• and
• a computing device communicatively coupled to the one or more curvature sensors and the one or more tactile sensors, the computing device programmed to determine the pose of the object held by the flexible end effector by generating continuous data from the curvature data and the tactile data and feeding the continuous data to a pose estimation algorithm.