Artificial finger skin having ridges and distributed tactile sensors used for grasp force control

An artificial elastic finger skin for robot fingers is developed for controlling grasp force when weight and frictional coefficient of the grasped object is unknown. The elastic finger skin has ridges at the surface to divide the stick/slip area. It also has a pair of tactile sensors embedded per one ridge same as finger of human. Surface of the whole finger is curved so that reaction force distribute. A Finite Element (FE) model of the elastic finger skin is made to conduct a dynamic contact analysis using a FE method in order to design the elastic finger skin in detail. Then the elastic finger skin is made. As a result, it is confirmed by calculation and experiment that the incipient slippage of the ridge that occurs near the edge of contact area is detected. It is useful for controlling grasping force when the weight and friction coefficient between the elastic finger skin and grasping object are unknown.