Developed by researchers from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), the sensor works by pressing a white adhesive tape onto the floor and scanning for dirt particles in the tape.
By measuring the degree of dissimilarity between the photo of the tape before and after it was pressed, the team came up with a dirt score that can be assigned to the area. The sensor could also count the number of pixels corresponding to dirt on the photo of the tape, providing insight into the area’s dirt density.
“With this sensor that assigns a dirt score to an area using the touch-and-inspect analogy, what we need to do next is design the robot that could ‘touch’ a huge region,” explained first author Thejus Pathmakumar.
One strategy is to let the robot roam everywhere, checking every nook and cranny of the area, but it was determined that such a method is inefficient, as some regions may have higher concentrations of accumulated dirt, while others may...