Project Overview

This project involved developing a magnetometer-based tactile sensing system for a Unitree Go1 quadruped robot to support physical interaction through the robot’s head. The goal was to turn the front of the robot into an active contact interface capable of detecting contact, estimating interaction forces, and supporting pushing-based environment interaction.

This work contributed to Head-On, an accepted paper at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2026), where I am listed as second author. My primary contributions were on the physical and embedded systems side of the project, including custom helmet design, tactile sensor fabrication, electronics integration, microcontroller setup, low-level firmware, and multi-sensor data communication. I also contributed to the paper writing and to the broader system development effort supporting contact detection, dynamic rebaselining, and force-estimation experiments.

🛠️ Technical Implementation & Software Architecture

Additional technical details on the sensing hardware, embedded electronics, firmware architecture, and data-processing pipeline will be added once the project is cleared for broader public release.

📊 Experimental Validation & Results

Additional validation details, experimental results, and system performance discussion will be added once the full research work is publicly available.

Current Development

Updates on the next-generation sensing interface, expanded electronics architecture, and ongoing system improvements will be added as the project continues to develop.

Helmet Prototype

Quadruped Tactile Helmet Prototype
Quadruped Tactile Helmet Prototype

Code & Paper

Project Code

The code for this project is currently confidential while the research work is being prepared for public release.

GitHub Repository Coming Soon

Research Paper

The full IROS 2026 paper is not publicly available yet, but it will be linked here once publication access is available.

Paper Coming Soon

Reference: Stergios Bachoumas, John Cahill and Panagiotis Artemiadis, “Head-On: Robust Tactile Force Sensing for Quadrupedal Interaction,” 2026 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2026 (to appear).