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arXiv · 2605.17929

TacSE3: Equivariant SE(3) Motion Estimation from Low-Texture Visuotactile Images for In-Gripper Tracking and Compensation

Abstract

Robotic in-hand manipulation requires reliable object-motion tracking under frequent visual occlusion, yet low-texture visuotactile images provide few stable correspondences for conventional image- or geometry-matching methods. This paper presents TacSE3, a tactile motion-estimation pipeline that converts low-texture visuotactile observations into a decoupled three-dimensional force field and estimates incremental rigid-body motion on SE(3). The method derives planar translation from contact-centroid motion and estimates rotation primarily from shear-related tactile responses, yielding a physically interpretable signal for in-gripper tracking and compensation. Experiments with paired DM-Tac fingertip sensors show that dual-sensor sensing reduces translation-rotation ambiguity, supports rotation tracking across axes and object geometries, and provides a lightweight compensation signal that improves disturbance tolerance in downstream manipulation tasks without retraining the base policy.

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Zhongyuan Liao, Junzhe Wang, Qingyang Liu, Zhenmin Huang, Jun Ma, Yi Cai, Fei Meng, Haobo Liang, Michael Yu Wang. 2026-05-27. TacSE3: Equivariant SE(3) Motion Estimation from Low-Texture Visuotactile Images for In-Gripper Tracking and Compensation. https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.17929

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