TacTape

Vision-based tactile sensors enable high-resolution tactile perception by capturing image-based contact data. However, their utility in tactile localization is limited by their inherently small and local sensing area, as well as their dependence on distinct object surface features. We propose TacTape, a novel tactile fiducial system that enables accurate and efficient tactile localization by attaching textured tape to object surfaces. A lightweight algorithm allows real-time estimation of contact position and orientation from partially observed structured 3D textures. Experiments demonstrate that TacTape achieves sub-millimeter positional and sub-degree angular localization accuracy, and operates significantly faster than classic tactile mapping methods.