Development of patterned carbon nanotubes on a 3D polymer substrate for the flexible tactile sensor application

Abstract

We present a design methodology and manufacturing process for the construction of articulated three-dimensional microstructures with features on the micron to centimeter scale. Flexure mechanisms and assembly folds result from the bulk machining and lamination of alternating rigid and compliant layers, similar to rigid-flex printed circuit board construction. Pop-up books and other forms of paper engineering inspire designs consisting of one complex part with a single assembly degree of freedom. Like an unopened pop-up book, mechanism links reside on multiple interconnected layers, reducing interference and allowing folding mechanisms of greater complexity than achievable with a single folding layer. Machined layers are aligned using dowel pins and bonded in parallel. Using mechanical alignment that persists during bonding allows device layers to be anisotropically pre-strained, a feature we exploit to create self-assembling structures. These methods and three example devices are presented.

Rapid Manufacturing of Mechanoreceptive Skins for Slip Detection in Robotic Grasping

“…[11,35] In the future, dynamic range could potentially be improved by using a rounded contact area rather than flat; this may reduce the deviations between trials. At high normal forces (above 8 N), the taxels became relatively insensitive to shear forces as the compressed sensor could not deform further; this is an inherent limitation of the contact resistance approach.…”

“…This can be partly mitigated by tuning the taxel geometry, but still lacks the dynamic range of some previous 3-axis sensors. [11,35] In the future, dynamic range could potentially be improved by using a rounded contact area rather than flat; this may reduce the deviations between trials. Capacitive sensing was presented as an alternative transduction method and was able to dramatically improve dynamic range; from 8:1 to 100:1 in the normal direction, and from 4:1 to 30:1 in the shear directions.…”

Highly Sensitive Soft Tactile Sensors for an Anthropomorphic Robotic Hand

“…In order to cope with this increasingly pressing demand, over the past thirty years many tactile sensors have been proposed (see [7] for an extensive review, up to the year 2010). Even just during the last five years, a considerable number of solutions have been proposed, employing many different technologies: capacitive [8]- [11], optical [12], [13], piezoresistive [14]- [16] (see [17] for a recent review), piezoelectric [18]- [20], ultrasonic [21], magnetic [22]- [24], nanoparticles [25], carbon nanotubes [26], [27], conductive liquids [28]- [30], conductive polymers [31] and tunnel effect [32]. Unfortunately, only a few of these technologies have been tested in actual robots, and therefore it is not easy to evaluate to what extent the data extracted from these sensors is useful for robotic applications.…”

Silicon Nanowires embedded pressure sensor with annularly grooved diaphragm for sensitivity improvement

“…Numbers of nano-scale materials have been adopted as new sensing element or detection platform [16][17][18][19][20][21] for the era of Nanoelectromechanical System (NEMS) technology with superior results and Silicon Nanowires (SiNWs) is one of most promising piezoresistive elements among all. Gained the proved functionality as the piezoresistor in the last decade [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29], the SiNWs based NEMS device has been demonstrated with a stable and excellent piezoresistive sensing performance [30][31][32][33].…”