How Many Tags and Which Material? Assessing Minimal Tag Impact and Material Effects on the Performance of Origami Fiducial Force-Torque Sensors

The fiducial-based origami force-torque sensor is a low-cost approach to a 6-degree-of-freedom (DoF) force-torque (FT) sensor. To investigate the factors that may affect the performance of the fiducial-based origami FT sensor, we vary the number of fiducial tags from one to four and choose different types of material used for the sensor legs, which are acrylic plastic and thick paper, respectively. The methodology involves using a camera for Aruco marker detection to measure relative displacement for input force estimation. Experimental results indicate that the number of tags does not affect the performance of the FT sensor, while the choice of different materials brings different calibrated k-values, influencing the sensor performance. Limitations such as material restriction and human parallax error are discussed. This project gives an insight into improving the design of cost-effective and multi-DoF FT sensors with origami structures.