Factorized Tactile Representation and Control for Sim-to-Real Manipulation

This research proposes a factorized tactile representation and control framework that maps normal force and contact patch to an effective contact response recoverable from sensor readings. The approach separates contact geometry, force distribution, and temporal contact change, and uses a Tactile Gated Policy to preserve these representations during control. Evaluated in both simulation and the real world, the method achieves <1 mm contact localization, 1.69 N force-tracking error on unseen geometries, and a 35% improvement in adversarial peg insertion over an unfactorized response.