Tactile sensors are one of the major devices that enable robotic systems to interact with the surrounding environment. This research aims to propose a mathematical model to describe the behavior of a tactile sensor based on experimental and statistical analyses and moreover to develop a versatile algorithm that can be applied to different tactile sensor arrays to enhance the limited resolution. With the proposed algorithm, the resolution can be increased up to twenty times if multiple measurements are available. To verify if the proposed algorithm can be used for tactile sensor arrays that are used in robotic system, a 16 × 10 force sensing array (FSR) is adopted. The acquired two-dimensional measurements were processed by a resolution enhancement method (REM) to enhance the resolution, which can be used to improve the resolution for single image or multiple measurements. As a result, the resolution of the sensor is increased and it can be used as synthetic skin to identify accurate shapes of objects and applied forces.
While acquiring specific physical properties within a targeted area, spatial resolution of hardware is usually one of the major limitations that affects the precision of data acquisition. Though measured results with higher spatial resolution are always desired, adequate configuration of hardware setups sometimes implies higher cost or longer acquisition time. In this study, a versatile resolution enhancement method is proposed to improve the sampling resolution. An efficient algorithm is used to convert the lower-resolution data into higher-resolution approximation. Three different engineering applications are used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. From the arithmetic results, the spatial sampling resolution can be greatly improved without trading-off the operating time.
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