Flexible Artificial Tactility with Excellent Robustness and Temperature Tolerance Based on Organohydrogel Sensor Array for Robot Motion Detection and Object Shape Recognition

Abstract

Abstract Hydrogel‐based flexible artificial tactility is equipped to intelligent robots to mimic human mechanosensory perception. However, it remains a great challenge for hydrogel sensors to maintain flexibility and sensory performances during cyclic loadings at high or low temperatures due to water loss or freezing. Here, a flexible robot tactility is developed with high robustness based on organohydrogel sensor arrays with negligent hysteresis and temperature tolerance. Conductive polyaniline chains are interpenetrated through a poly(acrylamide‐ co ‐acrylic acid) network with glycerin/water mixture with interchain electrostatic interactions and hydrogen bonds, yielding a high dissipated energy of 1.58 MJ m −3 , and ultralow hysteresis during 1000 cyclic loadings. Moreover, the binary solvent provides the gels with outstanding tolerance from −100 to 60 °C and the organohydrogel sensors remain flexible, fatigue resistant, conductive (0.27 S m −1 ), highly strain sensitive (GF of 3.88) and pressure sensitive (35.8 MPa −1 ). The organohydrogel sensor arrays are equipped on manipulator finger dorsa and pads to simultaneously monitor the finger motions and detect the pressure distribution exerted by grasped objects. A machine learning model is used to train the system to recognize the shape of grasped objects with 100% accuracy. The flexible robot tactility based on organohydrogels is promising for novel intelligent robots.