arXiv subjects

Yitian Shao

Publications and source records attributed to Yitian Shao.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Synchronized AMG and EMG Dataset of Lower-limb Muscle Activities in Everyday Training

Understanding how lower-limb muscle groups coordinate is important for studying movement impairment, rehabilitation, and physical performance. Reproducible analysis of this coordination requires multimodal recordings that relate local muscle-related signals with body-level kinematics. Complementing neural-level electrical activation captured by EMG, AMG provides a valuable mechanical approach to monitoring muscle activity. Here, we introduce a synchronized, multimodal dataset for healthy-adult lower-limb activities. For data collection on the left leg, 16 triaxial accelerometers were evenly divided into four muscle-site clusters for AMG recording, complemented by four surface EMG channels. A 15-marker optical motion-capture (MoCap) system captured lower-body kinematics, with the resulting marker trajectories used to compute bilateral knee and ankle joint angles. Our dataset contains 1,918 trials from 30 subjects across 16 task conditions. We benchmark the dataset by estimating four joint angles from 300 ms windows of the 5-100 Hz band-pass-filtered AMG data and assess matched EMG features in a separate modality ablation. In the primary cross subject benchmark, the four reference models achieved mean absolute errors of 8.840$^\circ$-9.591$^\circ$. The benchmark and ablation results characterize performance across subjects, tasks, and joint angles and examine the effects of sensor configuration, modality, the number of training subjects, and frequency representation. The release includes documented timing definitions, processed data, and reproducible benchmark resources. https://dongxutang918-afk.github.io/SAME-Limb/

cs.HC↗

arXiv2026

Detection and Ranging of Transient Extrinsic Contacts Based on 6D Dynamic Tactile Sensing

Delicate manipulation often involves transient and subtle collisions between a grasped object and the environment. While the human hand localizes these contacts effortlessly thanks to superior tactile sensitivity, robotic systems often lack the requisite resolution to acquire the information necessary for motion planning, resulting in clumsy manipulation or even task failure. Here, we propose transient extrinsic contact detection and ranging (TECDAR), a simple yet fast and efficient method for detecting and ranging extrinsic contact of grasped objects. Our design of gripper tips employs dynamic tactile sensing leveraging a single 2.5$\times$3 mm 6D inertial measurement unit. The sensor captures sub-millisecond tip deformations at a 7 kHz sampling rate, but operating on a data stream of only 84 KB/s. High bandwidth and compact data size enable the system to rapidly detect and localize contact between grasped objects and their surroundings. Specifically, fusing tactile data with robot pose via an extended Kalman filter enables fast and precise localization of extrinsic contact, reaching millimeter-level accuracy within 180 ms. Experimental results demonstrate that the system achieves an average localization accuracy of approximately 7\,mm in both line-contact and point-contact localization tasks. Furthermore, this near-instantaneous localization enables the robot to rectify its trajectory on a millisecond scale, facilitating precise tool manipulation and enhanced perception of complex environments purely through tactile exploration and mapping. We envision such techniques advancing the future of robotics across domains requiring delicate manipulation, including precision assembly, surgical assistance, and autonomous exploration in touch-dominant environments. Project page: humitlab.github.io/TECDAR/

cs.RO↗

arXiv2025

TranTac: Leveraging Transient Tactile Signals for Contact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

Robotic manipulation tasks such as inserting a key into a lock or plugging a USB device into a port can fail when visual perception is insufficient to detect misalignment. In these situations, touch sensing is crucial for the robot to monitor the task's states and make precise, timely adjustments. Current touch sensing solutions are either insensitive to detect subtle changes or demand excessive sensor data. Here, we introduce TranTac, a data-efficient and low-cost tactile sensing and control framework that integrates a single contact-sensitive 6-axis inertial measurement unit within the elastomeric tips of a robotic gripper for completing fine insertion tasks. Our customized sensing system can detect dynamic translational and torsional deformations at the micrometer scale, enabling the tracking of visually imperceptible pose changes of the grasped object. By leveraging transformer-based encoders and diffusion policy, TranTac can imitate human insertion behaviors using transient tactile cues detected at the gripper's tip during insertion processes. These cues enable the robot to dynamically control and correct the 6-DoF pose of the grasped object. When combined with vision, TranTac achieves an average success rate of 79% on object grasping and insertion tasks, outperforming both vision-only policy and the one augmented with end-effector 6D force/torque sensing. Contact localization performance is also validated through tactile-only misaligned insertion tasks, achieving an average success rate of 88%. We assess the generalizability by training TranTac on a single prism-slot pair and testing it on unseen data, including a USB plug and a metal key, and find that the insertion tasks can still be completed with an average success rate of nearly 70%. The proposed framework may inspire new robotic tactile sensing systems for delicate manipulation tasks.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2025

VibWalk: Mapping Lower-limb Haptic Experiences of Everyday Walking

Walking is among the most common human activities where the feet can gather rich tactile information from the ground. The dynamic contact between the feet and the ground generates vibration signals that can be sensed by the foot skin. While existing research focuses on foot pressure sensing and lower-limb interactions, methods of decoding tactile information from foot vibrations remain underexplored. Here, we propose a foot-equipped wearable system capable of recording wideband vibration signals during walking activities. By enabling location-based recording, our system generates maps of haptic data that encode information on ground materials, lower-limb activities, and road conditions. Its efficacy was demonstrated through studies involving 31 users walking over 18 different ground textures, achieving an overall identification accuracy exceeding 95\% (cross-user accuracy of 87\%). Our system allows pedestrians to map haptic information through their daily walking activities, which has potential applications in creating digitalized walking experiences and monitoring road conditions.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2019

A Wearable Tactile Sensor Array for Large Area Remote Vibration Sensing in the Hand

Tactile sensing is a essential for skilled manipulation and object perception, but existing devices are unable to capture mechanical signals in the full gamut of regimes that are important for human touch sensing, and are unable to emulate the sensing abilities of the human hand. Recent research reveals that human touch sensing relies on the transmission of mechanical waves throughout tissues of the hand. This provides the hand with remarkable abilities to remotely capture distributed vibration signatures of touch contact. Little engineering attention has been given to important sensory system. Here, we present a wearable device inspired by the anatomy and function of the hand and by human sensory abilities. The device is based on a 126 channel sensor array capable of capturing high resolution tactile signals during natural manual activities. It employs a network of miniature three-axis sensors mounted on a flexible circuit whose geometry and topology were designed match the anatomy of the hand, permitting data capture during natural interactions, while minimizing artifacts. Each sensor possesses a frequency bandwidth matching the human tactile frequency range. Data is acquired in real time via a custom FPGA and an I$^2$C network. We also present physiologically informed signal processing methods for reconstructing whole hand tactile signals using data from this system. We report experiments that demonstrate the ability of this system to accurately capture remotely produced whole hand tactile signals during manual interactions.

cs.RO↗