Directions Toward Effective Utilization of Tactile Skin: A Review

Abstract

A wide variety of tactile (touch) sensors exist today\ud for robotics and related applications. They make use of various\ud transduction methods, smart materials and engineered structures,\ud complex electronics, and sophisticated data processing.\ud While highly useful in themselves, effective utilization of tactile\ud sensors in robotics applications has been slow to come and largely\ud remains elusive today. This paper surveys the state of the art and\ud the research issues in this area, with the emphasis on effective\ud utilization of tactile sensors in robotic systems. One specific with\ud the use of tactile sensing in robotics is that the sensors have to be\ud spread along the robot body, the way the human skin is – thus\ud dictating varied 3-D spatio-temporal requirements, decentralized\ud and distributed control, and handling of multiple simultaneous\ud tactile contacts. Satisfying these requirements pose challenges\ud to making tactile sensor modality a reality. Overcoming these\ud challenges requires dealing with issues such as sensors placement,\ud electronic/mechanical hardware, methods to access and acquire\ud signals, automatic calibration techniques, and algorithms to\ud process and interpret sensing data in real time. We survey\ud this field from a system perspective, recognizing the fact that\ud the system performance tends to depend on how its various\ud components are put together. It is hoped that the survey will be\ud of use to practitioners designing tactile sensing hardware (wholebody\ud or large-patch sensor coverage), and to researchers working\ud on cognitive robotics involving tactile sensing

At-Home Computer-Aided Myoelectric Training System for Wrist Prosthesis

“…This refers especially on the applied grip force, so as an object to be neither firmly, nor loosely grasped. Solutions that have been explored towards this direction focus on tactile sensing chips that mimic the properties of the human skin [23][24][25][26].…”

Tactile Profile Classification Using a Multimodal MEMs-Based Sensing Module

“…The design of tactile sensors and the interpretation of the data gathered by such sensors is the subject of vast literature [1]. Several researchers have built artificial sensing fingers in order to investigate their performance during probing and exploration tasks.…”

New materials and advances in making electronic skin for interactive robots

“…For instance, information such as surface roughness, temperature and size which are critical for object discrimination and manipulation can only be determined by the sense of touch. [2] Inspired from human skin, the development of artificial skin (also referred to as synthetic skin or electronic skin (e-skin)) has become an area of immense interest to scientists. The primary function of e-skin is to provide tactile information which could be used to evaluate aforementioned parameters for the object handling.…”

“…However, unlike in previous review in tactile sensing, we have primarily focused on the materials used for the development of e-skin sensors. [2,11] …”