Biomimetic Multifinger Tactile Sensing and Contact‐Regulated Palpation for Autonomous Breast Tumor Localization

ABSTRACT Early detection of breast abnormalities remains challenging: manual palpation is subjective and operator‐dependent, while imaging modalities may miss small or subtle stiffness anomalies. This paper presents a biomimetic multifinger robotic palpation approach intended to support early breast‐cancer screening and follow‐up assessment as a proof‐of‐concept. The system integrates tactile arrays with a contact‐regulation scheme under standardized protocols. Each fingertip produces spatial tactile heatmaps, and a human‐like multifinger pressing strategy is used to elicit finger‐wise normal‐interaction responses under controlled contact conditions. The feedback variable is a resultant tactile signal obtained by aggregating taxel readings and is treated as a proxy of normal interaction rather than an absolute force measurement. A real‐time Kalman filter is employed to improve signal fidelity during dynamic contact. The platform is validated on breast‐inspired silicone phantoms with embedded rigid inclusions at varying depths and orientations. Across the tested scenarios, the system achieves repeatable real‐time localization, with stiffness‐weighted centroid errors within 10 mm of the nominal inclusion coordinates and a low incidence of spurious detections under the standardized protocol. We clarify that this study is a proof‐of‐concept focusing on stiffness anomaly localization under controlled phantom conditions rather than clinical diagnosis or benign/malignant classification.