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arXiv · 2605.20392

VBT-MPC: Vision-Based Tactile MPC for Contour Following

Edison Velasco-Sanchez·Luis F. Recalde·Guanrui Li·Pablo Gil
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Abstract

Tactile sensing plays a key role in robotic manipulation, particularly in tasks like surface inspection. Successful execution requires maintaining contact while accurately tracking object contours. In this work, we propose a Vision-Based Tactile Model Predictive Control (VBT-MPC) framework for robotic contour following using a Vision-Based Tactile Sensor (VBTS) mounted in an eye-in-hand configuration. The proposed controller operates directly in contour features space, thereby avoiding the need for separate pose-estimation modules or complex force-control architectures. We further compare our VBT-MPC with visual-servoing strategies adapted to tactile features, and evaluate contour tracking on objects with diverse geometries and materials in both simulation and real-world experiments.

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Edison Velasco-Sanchez, Luis F. Recalde, Guanrui Li, Pablo Gil. 2026-05-19. VBT-MPC: Vision-Based Tactile MPC for Contour Following. https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.20392

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