A human can lift up an object with almost minimal grasping force regardless of the fiction coefficient between the fingers and the object, but the sensing mechanism for this remarkable task has not been well explicated yet. In this paper we propose a tactile sensor to detect a fiction coefficient at the moment of touch. With this sensor output we evaluate the largest lifting-force just before a...

In this paper, we introduce a new touch sensor design, which we refer to as hybrid tactile sensing. Hybrid tac-tile sensing combines the simplicity of analog touch sensing , which is widely used in electronic touch screens and touchpads, with the ability of shape discrimination of the array touch sensing, found in tactile sensors designed for robotics applications. We describe the construction ...

Real-time detection of contact states, such as stick-slip interaction between a robot and an object on its end effector, is crucial for the robot to grasp and manipulate the object steadily. This paper presents a novel tactile sensor based on electromagnetic induction and its application on stick-slip interaction. An equivalent cantilever-beam model of the tactile sensor was built and capable o...

The limitations of rigid ngertips in the precise and algorithmic study of manipulation have been discussed in many works, some dating back more than a decade. Despite that fact, much of the work in dexterous manipulation has continued to use the \point-contact" model for nger-object interactions. In fact, most of the existing tactile sensing technologies are not adaptable to deformable ngertips...

Article history: Available online 21 March 2012

We proposed a tactile and proximity sensor (layered 3D touch screen) base on capacitance measurement. In the proposed sensor, the parallel-type capacitance sensor and plane-type capacitance sensor are layered. The sensor can detect the object and position before contact (proximity range), and can detect the indentation and precise position on contact. In addition, it can discriminate materials ...

Hyperacuity is a general aspect of animal perception that exploits spatially overlapping sensory receptive fields to perceive at finer acuity than the sensor resolution. Following a recent demonstration of hyperacuity in robot touch, we present a detailed and systematic analysis of localization acuity for both a biomimetic fingertip and a region of tactile skin. We identify three key factors fo...

Flexible tactile sensors capable of detecting the magnitude and direction of the applied force together are of great interest for application in human-interactive robots, prosthetics, and bionic arms/feet. Human skin contains excellent tactile sensing elements, mechanoreceptors, which detect their assigned tactile stimuli and transduce them into electrical signals. The transduced signals are tr...