Journal
SMART MATERIALS AND STRUCTURES
Volume 27, Issue 12, Pages -Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1088/1361-665X/aaeae4
Keywords
electronic skin; strain gauge; piezoresistive; soft; viscoelastic
Funding
- NSF through the National Robotics Initiative (NRI) [IIS1317913]
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Tactile sensing is of interest for facilitating interactions between robots and humans. To aid the robot's interpretation of human contact, the use of a multi-layer cutaneous tactile sensing architecture that can provide more information and an expanded force sensing range was explored, revealing differences in the signal generated by a machine versus a human. The multi-layer system consisted of two stretchable sensing skins alternating with two foam layers of different stiffness. When human touch was compared with machine indentation, a large variability in human touch was found. Thus, although the topmost skin, placed over a soft foam, was able to better recognize light contacts, a second underlying skin, placed over a harder foam, was required to gauge stronger human contacts. Out-of-plane touch modalities, such as tapping and punching, could be identified using strip-shaped skins having just two electrodes. To provide distributed sensing, the technique of electrical impedance tomography was employed with the multi-layer architecture using larger-area skins having electrodes around the perimeter. Distributed touch modalities, such as multi-point finger presses and sliding, were distinguished from single-point pressing. The distributed multi-layer sensing system also had the ability to assess higher-force touches.
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