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. 2019 Oct 29;19(21):4697.
doi: 10.3390/s19214697.

Tactile Robotic Skin with Pressure Direction Detection

Jan Klimaszewski  1 , Daniel Janczak  2 , Paweł Piorun  3
Affiliations

Tactile Robotic Skin with Pressure Direction Detection

Jan Klimaszewski et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

Tactile sensing is the current challenge in robotics and object manipulation by machines. The robot's agile interaction with the environment requires pressure sensors to detect not only location and value, but also touch direction. The paper presents a new, two-layer construction of artificial robotic skin, which allows measuring the location, value, and direction of pressure from external force. The main advantages of the proposed solution are its low cost of implementation based on two FSR (Force Sensitive Resistor) matrices and real-time operation thanks to direction detection using fast matching algorithms. The main contribution is the idea of detecting the pressure direction by determining the shift between the pressure maps of the skin's upper and lower layers. The pressure map of each layer is treated as an image and registered using a phase correlation (POC-Phase Only Correlation) method. The use of the developed device can be very wide. For example, in the field of cooperative robots, it can lead to the improvement of human machine interfaces and increased security of human-machine cooperation. The proposed construction can help meet the increasing requirements for robots in cooperation with humans, but also enable agile manipulation of objects from their surroundings.

Keywords: graphene nanoplatelets; pressure sensor; robotic skin; sheer force detection; tactile sensor.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Diagram of the double-layer FSR (Force Sensitive Resistor) matrix.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Single robotic skins’ layer—the FSR matrix real view (left) and diagram (right); 1.1—resistive layer on substrate 1; on substrate 2: 2.1—comb electrodes; 2.2—dielectric separators; 2.3—paths connecting sensors in rows.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Measurement principle for FSR matrix of size 2 × 2.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Characteristics of the FSR sensor resistance to pressure (2%wg GNP/PVDF).
Figure 5
Figure 5
Expander board after assembly—top view.
Figure 6
Figure 6
An example of visualization of measurement data from one layer (one FSR matrix).
Figure 7
Figure 7
The idea of pressure vector estimation.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Robot with pressing tool.
Figure 9
Figure 9
Example touch measurement in time.
Figure 10
Figure 10
Example POC (Phase Only Correlation) measurements depending of touch direction.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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