Design and fabrication of a six-dimensional wrist force/torque sensor based on E-type membranes compared to cross beams

This paper presents a novel device for measuring components of forces and moments along and about three orthogonal axes based on E-type membranes compared to conventional sensor based on cross beams. After design and analysis of both types of sensors, we chose to fabricate a six-dimensional wrist force/torque sensor based on E-type membranes. Furthermore, the calibration and decoupling based on Neural Network method were performed, and the sensor possesses excellent characteristics such as high measurement sensitivity, overload protection, good linearity, and weak couplings between components. Finally, its maximum interference error and nonlinearity error are 1.6% F.S. and 0.17% F.S., respectively. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.