Learning tactile perception from high-bandwidth single-point sensing

Abstract

Tactile sensing is increasingly being incorporated into learning-based robotic manipulation, yet many existing approaches rely on spatially distributed sensors. Here we introduce SpectRobot, a framework that transforms single-point tactile signals into compact time-frequency spectrograms. These spectrograms encode high-bandwidth tactile histories as fixed-size image-like representations. They can be processed by standard vision encoders and integrated into learning pipelines originally developed for vision, while preserving temporal and frequency information unavailable to conventional cameras. Rather than increasing spatial density through arrays of tactile elements, SpectRobot exploits the rich dynamics contained in sparse, high-bandwidth single-point measurements. In our implementation, the sensors are mounted away from the contact surface while remaining mechanically coupled to it, reducing direct exposure to wear and potentially improving robustness in harsh environments and for long-term deployment on dexterous robots. Our experiments demonstrate that: (1) a robot can exploit single-point vibration signals to solve a visually occluded manipulation task; (2) temporal history strongly influences policy performance, while sensing bandwidth controls the spectral information available, with measurements extending to 100~kHz; and (3) the same representation can be used across different tactile sensing technologies mediated by acceleration, force, or strain. We further show that capabilities previously associated with research-grade instrumentation can be accessed using readily available, off-the-shelf hardware. We believe that broader access to high-bandwidth tactile sensing could facilitate the integration of contact dynamics into embodied learning systems and, for some tasks, offer an alternative or complement to increasing the spatial density of tactile sensing.