Multimodal tactile sensing could potentially enable robots to improve their performance at manipulation tasks by rapidly discriminating between task-relevant objects. Data-driven approaches to this tactile perception problem show promise, but there is a dearth of suitable training data. In this two-page paper, we present a portable handheld device for the efficient acquisition of multimodal tac...

A tactile sensor system, based upon the electric field distortion, is proposed. Tactile sensors, detecting electric resistance or capacitance, have two opposing electrodes in general. Such structure have difficulty to make flexible sensor sheet, which is needed for robotic manipulator or other skin like sensing purpose. In this study, a sensing system with one electrode, embedded in conducting ...

A soft tactile sensor able to detect both normal and tangential forces is fabricated with a simple method using conductive textile. Owing to the multi-layered architecture, the capacitive-based tactile sensor is highly sensitive (less than 10 mg and 8 μm, for minimal detectable weight and displacement, respectively) within a wide normal force range (potentially up to 27 N (400 kPa)) and natural...

An electrocutaneous display system composed of three layers is implemented for augmentation of skin sensation. The first layer has electrodes on the front side of a thin plate, the second has optical sensors on the reverse side of the plate, and the third is a thin film force sensor between the other two layers. Visual images captured by the sensor are translated into tactile information, and d...

The development of a bio-hybrid tactile sensor array that incorporates a skin analogue comprised of alginate encapsulated fibroblasts is described. The electrical properties are modulated by mechanical stress induced during contact, and changes are detected by a ten-channel dual-electrode impedance sensing array. By continuously monitoring the impedance of the sensor array at a fixed frequency,...

Tactile sensors are essential for robotic systems to safely interact with the external world and to precisely manipulate objects. Existing tactile sensors are typically either expensive or limited by poor performance, and most are not mechanically compliant. This work presents MagTrix, a soft tactile sensor array based on four 3D Hall sensors with corresponding permanent magnets. MagTrix has th...

High-density tactile sensing has been pursued for humanoid robotic hands to obtain contact force information while the elastomer skin cover is traditionally considered to impair the force discrimination. In this work, we try to utilize the diffusion effect of the elastomer cover to identify an arbitrary contact force load just based on a sparse tactile sensor array. By numerical analysis, we pr...

The stretchable sensor skin we propose uses microwaves propagating in a two-Dimensional Signal Transmission (2DST) sheet. A small tactile sensor chip with a pair of Resonant Proximity Connectors (RPCs) couples with 2D microwaves carrying signals. Chip operating power is also supplied by 2D microwaves. The RPC is a spiral electrode whose arc length is a quarter of the electromagnetic wavelength....