Recent Progress in Advanced Tactile Sensing Technologies for Soft Grippers

TLDR

Tactile sensing technology is essential for soft grippers, enabling safe interaction with unstructured environments and precise measurement of object properties such as size and shape. This review aims to develop state‑of‑the‑art tactile sensing technologies for soft grippers to support diverse grasping tasks. The authors survey the evolution of tactile sensors—including capacitive, piezoresistive, piezoelectric, fiber Bragg grating, vision‑based, triboelectric, and other advanced types—and describe their principles, structures, and modalities for force measurement, object property perception, slip detection, and multimodal fusion. They summarize application scenarios of soft grippers using these sensors, identify remaining challenges, and propose future directions to address them.

Abstract

Abstract Tactile sensing technology is crucial for soft grippers. Soft grippers equipped with intelligent tactile sensing systems based on various sensors can interact safely with the unstructured environments and obtain precise properties of objects (e.g., size and shape). It is essential to develop state‐of‐the‐art sensing technologies for soft grippers to handle different grasping tasks. In this review, the development of tactile sensing techniques for robotic hands is first introduced. Then, the principles and structures of different types of sensors normally adopted in soft grippers, including capacitive tactile sensors, piezoresistive tactile sensors, piezoelectric tactile sensors, fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors, vision‐based tactile sensors, triboelectric tactile sensors, and other advanced sensors developed recently are briefly presented. Furthermore, sensing modalities and methodologies for soft grippers are also described in aspects of force measurement, perception of object properties, slip detection, and fusion of perception. The application scenarios of soft grippers are also summarized based on these advanced sensing technologies. Finally, the challenges of tactile sensing technologies for soft grippers that need to be tackled are discussed and perspectives in addressing these challenges are pointed out.