Characteristics of a New Optical Tactile Sensor for Interactive Robot Fingers

摘要

This paper discussed about the development of a new tactile sensor based on an optical and image processing analysis. It was made from a silicone rubber and designed based on the shape of a finger. The middle part of the sensor is a hollow “dome” with a grid marked on its internal surface. A digital force meter is used to give a precise value of force which will deform the tactile sensor at a selected displacement. An optical fiberscope is used to “see” the deformation image from inside the silicone dome and the image is captured by a CCD camera and stored for further processing using an image processing algorithm to be developed. This paper will highlight the experimental investigation to analyse the characteristic of the sensor which includes linearity behavior, hysteresis loss and deformations of the proposed tactile sensor.