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. 2017 Nov 10;17(11):2592.
doi: 10.3390/s17112592.

A Pneumatic Tactile Sensor for Co-Operative Robots

Daoxiong Gong  1   2 , Rui He  3   4 , Jianjun Yu  5   6 , Guoyu Zuo  7   8
Affiliations

A Pneumatic Tactile Sensor for Co-Operative Robots

Daoxiong Gong et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

Tactile sensors of comprehensive functions are urgently needed for the advanced robot to co-exist and co-operate with human beings. Pneumatic tactile sensors based on air bladder possess some noticeable advantages for human-robot interaction application. In this paper, we construct a pneumatic tactile sensor and apply it on the fingertip of robot hand to realize the sensing of force, vibration and slippage via the change of the pressure of the air bladder, and we utilize the sensor to perceive the object's features such as softness and roughness. The pneumatic tactile sensor has good linearity, repeatability and low hysteresis and both its size and sensing range can be customized by using different material as well as different thicknesses of the air bladder. It is also simple and cheap to fabricate. Therefore, the pneumatic tactile sensor is suitable for the application of co-operative robots and can be widely utilized to improve the performance of service robots. We can apply it to the fingertip of the robot to endow the robotic hand with the ability to co-operate with humans and handle the fragile objects because of the inherent compliance of the air bladder.

Keywords: force sensor; hysteresis; linearity; pneumatic tactile sensor; repeatability.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The pneumatic tactile sensor. (a) the configuration of the sensor with the fingertip connected to the MPXV5050DP; (b) the components of the fingertip; (c) the size of the fingertip.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The diagram of the pneumatic sensor’s construction and applications.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The experiment of force sensing.
Figure 4
Figure 4
The force-voltage curve, the fitting line and the residual error of force sensing. (a) the force-voltage curve; (b) the fitting line in the range of good linearity; (c) the residual error.
Figure 4
Figure 4
The force-voltage curve, the fitting line and the residual error of force sensing. (a) the force-voltage curve; (b) the fitting line in the range of good linearity; (c) the residual error.
Figure 5
Figure 5
The repeatability of the sensor under different forces: 0.1 kgf, 0.5 kgf, 1.0 kgf and 1.5 kgf.
Figure 6
Figure 6
The hysteresis of the sensor. (a) The hysteresis curve; (b) The hysteresis error.
Figure 7
Figure 7
The experiment of sensing the surface of object. (a) a fingertip with the fingerprint; (b) the relative movement between the fingertip and the test surface; (c) the test grooves.
Figure 8
Figure 8
The results of surface with 4, 3 and 2 mm wide ridges, including the raw data, the result of Kalman filtering, the result of DFT and the result of both Kalman filtering and DFT. (a) the result of the surface with 4 mm wide ridges; (b) the result of the surface with 3 mm wide ridges; (c) the result of the surface with 2 mm wide ridges.
Figure 9
Figure 9
The experiment of detecting softness. (a) the experiment; (b) the softness simulated by springs.
Figure 10
Figure 10
The experiment result of softness. (a) the raw data; (b) the curve of softness.
Figure 11
Figure 11
The experiment setup of sensing slippage. (a) clamping an object with smooth surface; (b) clamping an object with rough surface.
Figure 12
Figure 12
The experiment results of sensing slippage. (a) the objects with tendency of slip under impulsive and persistent force; (b) the smooth and rough object slipping.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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