A tactile sensor is a necessary means for intelligent equipment to acquire external environment information and improve the performance of human–robot interaction. Although high‐performance tactile sensor array is widely studied, the large number of wires required to transmit data from numerous arrays is still a major obstacle in large‐area application. In this study, a large‐area, low‐cost, stretchable, textile‐based tactile sensor, which is sensitive for contact position, is proposed. The sensor has a simple three‐layer structure and four external wires due to the use of a novel double‐faced effect functional knitted textile with “self‐uniformity” characteristic. The porous polyurethane foam with a large pore size is first reported as touch switch material. It not only has excellent touch switch function, but also makes the sensor have a soft and elastic touch and good impact buffering. In addition, the application of radial basis function neural network makes the sensor have self‐learning “intelligence,” which makes the sensor flexibly and quickly arrange even on the surface of a complex 3D object. Finally, the potential applications of the sensor are demonstrated. This study shows that the sensor has great potential in the fields of wearable devices, robot interaction control, and human–computer interface.
This paper presents a novel capacitive pressure sensor that is capable of making highly accurate measurements at low pressure. Different from the method that many researchers have successfully used to improve the sensitivity of capacitive sensors by using a micro-structured dielectric layer (such as the micro-structured PDMS film), this paper creatively used an elastic metallized sponge (nickel-plated polyurethane sponge) as the elastic porous electrode of the capacitive sensor, so that it can detect very low pressure (such as a 0.2 g soybean). Compared with the traditional capacitive sensor using an insulative polyurethane sponge as the dielectric, the baseline capacitance of the sensor of the same size can increase by 10 times, and it has a better signal-to-noise ratio. In addition, the sensor has good robustness due to the good mechanical properties of the nickel-plated polyurethane sponge. The fabrication process of the sensor is extremely simple, the cost is low, and it can be made into any planar shape. In this paper, we describe the structure, principle and manufacture of the sensor, and present the application on robotic grasping.
Purpose
This paper aims to report a flexible position-sensitive sensor that can be applied as large-area electronic skin over the stiff media.
Design/methodology/approach
The sensor uses a whole piezoresistive film as a touch sensing area. By alternately constructing two uniform electric fields with orthogonal directions in the piezoresistive film, the local changes in conductivity caused by touch can be projected to the boundary along the equipotential line under the constraint of electric field. Based on the change of boundary potential in the two uniform electric fields, it can be easy to determine the position of the contact area in the piezoresistive film.
Findings
Experiment results show the proposed tactile sensor is capable of detecting the contact position and classifying the contact force in real-time based on the changes of the potential differences on the boundary of the sensor.
Practical implications
The application example of using the sensor sample as a controller in shooting game is presented in this paper. It shows that the sensor has excellent touch sensing performance.
Originality/value
In this paper, a position-sensitive electronic skin is proposed. The experiment results show that the sensor has great application prospects in the field of interactive tactile sensing.
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