A Flexible Tactile Sensor Array Based on Conductive Rubber In this paper, a novel flexible tactile sensor array based on conductive rubber is presented. Compared with other research results, we use the materials with complete flexibility to fabricate the soft sensors. The sensing prototype includes polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) as the sealing layers and conductive rubber as sensing layer. This proposed tactile sensor can measure the contact pressure under wrapping one curved surface. In our study, we developed a skinlike tactile sensor array from three aspects: design procedures, fabrication techniques and test results via taking one 8xc3x978 sensor array for example, which is a sandwich structure and the sensing material was laminated into a thin encapsulation film with 2mm in thickness. Furthermore, the sensor overcomes the fabrication complexity, chemical unsafety and environmental instability problems to some extent. In the end, the final experimental demonstration verify the feasibility of the sensor array with discrete sensing elements in measuring the tactile force via matlab.

Development of a 3axis Human Fingertip Tactile Sensor with an OrthoPlanar Spring Human experts have mastered many manual skills. Transferring those skills to robots or human novices is challenging. Not only the movements, but also the exerted forces are of importance. In this paper we propose a sensor that can measure the force vector acting on the human fingertip, without covering the part of the fingertip that is contact with the touched object. Compared to our previous iterations of this sensor, we use a spring instead of viscoelastic material as the deformable material for the sensor. While it is challenging to include a spring in the given form factor, springs have the benefit of lower hysteresis than viscoelastic materials. This paper presents the integration of the spring in the sensor and shows experimental validation with 8 subjects. Compared to our previous version of the sensor with 2 Hall effect sensors, we achieved improved sensing characteristics.