Journal
JOURNAL OF MICROMECHANICS AND MICROENGINEERING
Volume 21, Issue 3, Pages -Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1088/0960-1317/21/3/035010
Keywords
-
Ask authors/readers for more resources
In this paper, we report real-time measurement results of various contact forces exerted on a new flexible capacitive three-axis tactile sensor array based on polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). A unit sensor consists of two thick PDMS layers with embedded copper electrodes, a spacer layer, an insulation layer and a bump layer. There are four capacitors in a unit sensor to decompose a contact force into its normal and shear components. They are separated by a wall-type spacer to improve the mechanical response time. Four capacitors are arranged in a square form. The whole sensor is an 8 x 8 array of unit sensors and each unit sensor responds to forces in all three axes. Measurement results show that the full-scale range of detectable force is around 0-20 mN (250 kPa) for all three axes. The estimated sensitivities of a unit sensor with the current setup are 1.3, 1.2 and 1.2%/mN for the x-, y-and z-axes, respectively. A simple mechanical model has been established to calculate each axial force component from the measured capacitance value. Normal and shear force distribution images are captured from the fabricated sensor using a real-time measurement system. The mechanical response time of a unit sensor has been estimated to be less than 160 ms. The flexibility of the sensor has also been demonstrated by operating the sensor on a curved surface of 4 mm radius of curvature.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available