Skip to content

Visualizing Tactile Data

Visualizing Tactile Data

There exist two ways to visualize tactile data:

  1. iCubSkinGui
  2. iCubGui

The iCubSkinGui visualizes a 2D representation of one or more patches of tactile sensors. The GUI reads the tactile data from an input YARP port, hence it can visualize both raw data and compensated data.

The iCubGui visualizes a 3D model of the iCub. To visualize the tactile data with this GUI you need to launch the skinManager module and connect the skinManager output port /skinManager/skin_events:o to the iCubGui input port /iCubGui/forces. Then, this GUI visualizes a red arrow for each contact detected by the tactile sensors. The length of the arrow is proportional to the sum of the outputs of the tactile sensors.

Alternatively, if the robot is equipped with force/torque sensors and wholeBodyDynamics is running, the iCubGui can be connected to the port /wholeBodyDynamics/contacts:o. In this case, the tactile data are integrated with the force/torque data to estimate the external contact forces. This means that the length of the arrows displayed in the iCubGui would be proportional to the estimated force magnitude (rather than the tactile sensor outputs). To make this system work, you need to connect the skinManager port /skinManager/skin_events:o to the wholeBodyDynamics port /wholeBodyDynamics/skin_contacts:i.