Robotic tactile sensors, including vision-based and taxel-based sensors, enable agile manipulation and safe human-robot interaction through force sensation. However, variations in structural configurations, measured signals, and material properties create domain gaps that limit the transferability of learned force sensation across different tactile sensors. Here, we introduce GenForce, a general framework for achieving transferable force sensation across both homogeneous and heterogeneous tactile sensors in robotic systems. By unifying tactile signals into marker-based binary tactile images, GenForce enables the transfer of existing force labels to arbitrary target sensors using a marker-to-marker translation technique with a few paired data. This process equips uncalibrated tactile sensors with force prediction capabilities through spatiotemporal force prediction models trained on the transferred data. Extensive experimental results validate GenForce's generalizability, accuracy, and robustness across sensors with diverse marker patterns, structural designs, material properties, and sensing principles. The framework significantly reduces the need for costly and labor-intensive labeled data collection, enabling the rapid deployment of multiple tactile sensors on robotic hands requiring force sensing capabilities.

Neurosurgery requires exceptional precision and comprehensive preoperative planning to ensure optimal patient outcomes. Despite technological advancements, there remains a need for intuitive, accessible tools to enhance surgical preparation and medical education in this field. Traditional methods often lack the immersive experience necessary for surgeons to visualize complex procedures and critical neurovascular structures, while existing advanced solutions may be cost-prohibitive or require specialized hardware. This research presents a novel markerless web-based augmented reality (AR) application designed to address these challenges in neurointerventional preoperative planning and education. Utilizing MediaPipe for precise facial localization and segmentation, and React Three Fiber for immersive 3D visualization, the application offers an intuitive platform for complex preoperative procedures. A virtual 2-RPS parallel positioner or Skull-Bot model is projected onto the user's face in real-time, simulating surgical tool control with high precision. Key features include the ability to import and auto-scale head anatomy to the user's dimensions and real-time auto-tracking of head movements once aligned. The web-based nature enables simultaneous access by multiple users, facilitating collaboration during surgeries and allowing medical students to observe live procedures. A pilot study involving three participants evaluated the application's auto-scaling and auto-tracking capabilities through various head rotation exercises. This research contributes to the field by offering a cost-effective, accessible, and collaborative tool for improving neurosurgical planning and education, potentially leading to better surgical outcomes and more comprehensive training for medical professionals. The source code of our application is publicly available at https://github.com/Hillllllllton/skullbot_web_ar.

Without loss of generality, existing machine learning techniques may learn spurious correlation dependent on the domain, which exacerbates the generalization of models in out-of-distribution (OOD) scenarios. To address this issue, recent works build a structural causal model (SCM) to describe the causality within data generation process, thereby motivating methods to avoid the learning of spurious correlation by models. However, from the machine learning viewpoint, such a theoretical analysis omits the nuanced difference between the data generation process and representation learning process, resulting in that the causal analysis based on the former cannot well adapt to the latter. To this end, we explore to build a SCM for representation learning process and further conduct a thorough analysis of the mechanisms underlying spurious correlation. We underscore that adjusting erroneous covariates introduces bias, thus necessitating the correct selection of spurious correlation mechanisms based on practical application scenarios. In this regard, we substantiate the correctness of the proposed SCM and further propose to control confounding bias in OOD generalization by introducing a propensity score weighted estimator, which can be integrated into any existing OOD method as a plug-and-play module. The empirical results comprehensively demonstrate the effectiveness of our method on synthetic and large-scale real OOD datasets.