Multilayered and Arrayed Flexible Tactile Sensor Using PVDf

摘要

In this paper, we present a multilayered and arrayed flexible sensor made of Polyvinylidene Fluoride (PVDF), which can detect contact normal forces as well as positions. Since the sensor is flexible enough to be adapted to arbitrarily curved three-dimensional surfaces, it can be employed as the fingertip sensor of the robot hand, contact sensors for robot manipulators etc. The sensor displays enhanced characteristic features in terms of ease of fabrication, high spatial resolution and cost-effectiveness. We propose a new design of the sensor that can be fabricated without adopting sophisticated processing technique as well as with improved spatial resolution. In addition, an electronic hardware for signal processing using a DSP chip has been proposed and, its effectiveness is validated experimentally.