A new measurement system for high-resolution tactile imaging

Abstract

knights, Reading, England RG6 2AX Over the last 12 years, consistent effort has been directed toward the development of a usable sense of touch for machines. This research has been somewhat overshadowed by the ongoing development in artificial vision, but has remained important for specialised object identification applications. Over the aforementioned period, a great number of different transduction and measurement principles have been adopted, each claiming to offer certain desirable characteristics. The last five years have shown a reduction in the variation of methods being pursued.One of the main surviving transduction methods is based upon the variable-separation capacitive transducer. The method of capacitance measurement, adopted by two major American research teams developing such sensors, has been a simple charge amplifier. Their measurement methodology has limited the spatial resolution, or inter-tactel separation, and slowed the acceptance of an otherwise near ideal taction device. This paper describes the development, a design model and subsequent construction, of a variableseparation capacitive tactile system which employs an improved measurement system. The system permits the sensor spatial separation to be reduced to the limits of the physical construction method and no longer be confined by the measurement technique. This will, it is hoped, lead to the construction of larger, more densely packed, arrays capable of low-cost, efficient object recognition. The sensor performance, possible applications and intended direction for further research are also discussed.