Toward Gripper-Integrated Active Electrosense for Pre-Contact Sensing in Underwater Soft Grippers

Summary

arXiv:2606.03204v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Underwater manipulation often occurs under degraded visibility due to turbidity, glare, and gripper occlusion, limiting the reliability of vision-based perception during approach and grasping. In such settings, soft grippers are well suited for compliant interaction, but they typically lack an onboard pre-contact cue that can guide approach and closure when vision is unreliable. This extended abstract explores active electrosense as a lightweight sensing modality that can provide a proximity-like signal prior to contact by measuring perturbations of an applied electric field in conductive media.