Conformable and scalable tactile sensor skin for curved surfaces

TLDR

The authors design a conformable, cut‑and‑paste tactile sensor skin that can be easily configured and modularized. The skin consists of a serial‑bus network of self‑contained modules with pressure‑sensitive elements mounted on a pliable, foldable substrate, allowing free distribution of modules and installation on curved surfaces, as demonstrated on a humanoid robot. Adding or removing modules lets the sensor skin adjust its coverage area and element density, making it highly modular and intrinsically scalable. No additional information provided.

Abstract

We present the design and realization of a conformable tactile sensor skin (patent pending). The skin is organized as a network of self-contained modules consisting of tiny pressure-sensitive elements which communicate through a serial bus. By adding or removing modules it is possible to adjust the area covered by the skin as well as the number (and density) of tactile elements. The skin is therefore highly modular and thus intrinsically scalable. Moreover, because the substrate on which the modules are mounted is sufficiently pliable to be folded and stiff enough to be cut, it is possible to freely distribute the individual tactile elements. A tactile skin composed of multiple modules can also be installed on curved surfaces. Due to their easy configurability we call our sensors "cut-and-paste tactile sensors. " We describe a prototype implementation of the skin on a humanoid robot