A novel pneumatic soft sensor for measuring contact force and curvature of a soft gripper

摘要

Highlights?A novel pneumatic soft sensor (PSS) for soft grippers is proposed.?PSS can be used as a contact force sensor and a curvature sensor.?PSS has a good deformability and can be easily integrated into a fully soft continuum gripper without restricting its behavior.?A novel soft pneumatic finger with simple structure and good self-sensing ability is presented.AbstractSoft pneumatic grippers always have characteristics of simple structure, good compliance, and natural motion, which make them have a wide range of applications. Nevertheless, there is a significant challenge that sensors used for detecting gripper’s force and deformation are asked for having good deformability and simple structure, and doing not limit gripper’s behavior. Based on the requirements, a novel pneumatic soft sensor (PSS) is designed and manufactured in this paper. It is composed of a sensing body and a pressure sensor.