A Magnetically Transduced Whisker for Angular Displacement and Moment Sensing This work presents the design, modeling, and fabrication of a whiskerlike sensor capable of measuring the whiskerxe2x80x99s angular displacement as well as the applied moments at the base of the whisker. The sensor takes advantage of readily accessible and lowcost 3D magnetic sensors to transduce whisker deflections, and a planar serpentine spring structure at the whisker base is used to provide a mechanical suspension for the whisker to rotate. The sensor prototype was characterized, calibrated, and compared with analytical models of the spring system and the magnetic field. The prototype showed a moment sensing range of 1.1Nxc2xb7mm when deflected up to 19.7xc2xb0. The sensitivity of the sensor was 0.38xc2xb0LSB for the angular displacement sensing, and 0.021 NmmLSB for the moment sensing. A fully integrated system is demonstrated to display realtime information from the whisker on a graphical interface.

A Soft, Distributed, Digital 3axis Skin Sensor Employing a Hybrid PermanentAdjustable Magnetic Field In this letter, we present a new iteration of a prototype sensor module that can be used as a skin sensor for robots. The sensor uses a hybrid arrangement that consists in a small permanent magnet and an electromagnet working together above a 3axis magnetic sensor. Both layers are separated by a flexible material that provides compliance to the sensor module. The sensitivity of the sensor can be adjusted by changing the flow of current on the electromagnet, while the permanent magnet increases the intensity of the overall magnetic field to optimize the utilization of the bandwidth of the sensor. Each sensor module includes a microcontroller with digital output that offers multimodal and distributed sensing capabilities. Problem areas of the previous version are indicated, the magnet array idea is presented and tested, and finally experiments are performed on different shapes of a flexible material to be used as middle layer.