20.500.12556/RUL-187829 Optical tactile force sensing with a soft transparent sensory skin using laser time-of-flight measurement and nonlinear modeling This work presents a machine learning-based framework for predicting applied contact force from the optical response of a time-of-flight (ToF) sensor embedded in a soft, optically transparent tactile sensing medium, SoftSkin. The SoftSkin medium acts as a light-guiding structure, enabling light propagation via total internal reflection. External pressure deforms the light-guide material, resulting in measurable changes in the optical response. A robotic test setup equipped with a force–torque sensor enabled controlled and repeatable experiments. Training datasets were collected at three indentation velocities and six applied force levels. Three multilayer perceptron (MLP) architectures were developed and evaluated. The single-input method used only photon counts, whereas the dual-input method incorporated temporal ambient-light conditions. A third approach, the derivative-enhanced dual-input method, additionally integrates temporal gradients of the photon response. For each MLP model, a Random Forest (RF) residual corrector was applied to reduce prediction errors. Performance was evaluated on an independent test set comprising unseen force magnitudes at three indentation velocities. All MLP–RF models achieved a mean absolute prediction error below 1 N, with the derivative-enhanced dual-input model demonstrating the best performance. The results confirm that ToF-based optical tactile sensing, combined with lightweight neural network architectures and residual learning, enables accurate reconstruction of dynamic force profiles despite sensor noise and the limited frame rate of the ToF sensor. applied contact force prediction LIDAR light-guide neural network NN soft sensor skin tactile sensing light detection and ranging time of flight ToF napovedovanje kontaktne sile LIDAR optični medij za prenos svetlobe nevronska mreža mehka senzorna površina taktilno zaznavanje true false true Angleški jezik Slovenski jezik Članek v reviji 2026-09-15 08:57:53 2026-09-15 08:57:59 2026-09-23 10:20:01 0000-00-00 00:00:00 2026 0 0 Str. 25717-25729 no. 17 Vol. 26 1. Sep. 2026 0000-00-00 Zaloznikova Objavljeno apc 0000-00-00 0000-00-00 0000-00-00 004.8:681.5 1558-1748 10.1109/JSEN.2026.3713612 288831747 Optical_Tactile_Force_Sensing_With_a_Soft_Transparent_Sensory_Skin_Using_Laser_Time-of-Flight_Measurement_and_Nonlinear_Modeling.pdf Optical_Tactile_Force_Sensing_With_a_Soft_Transparent_Sensory_Skin_Using_Laser_Time-of-Flight_Measurement_and_Nonlinear_Modeling.pdf 1 F8BBC7202B5049322171094B60655B37 7b79598e4852930d8b78c894c276ddba84bc461def221e4e91a9b48347102d03 ec3fe3b8-b0d2-11f1-8bc5-0050569b8976 https://repozitorij.uni-lj.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=247612 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11616702 1 c27ed4e1-b0d2-11f1-8bc5-0050569b8976 https://repozitorij.uni-lj.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=247611 Fakulteta za elektrotehniko 0 0 0