Tactile Sensors

The development of a bio-hybrid tactile sensor array that incorporates a skin analogue comprised of alginate encapsulated fibroblasts is described. The electrical properties are modulated by mechanical stress induced during contact, and changes are detected by a ten-channel dual-electrode impedance sensing array. By continuously monitoring the impedance of the sensor array at a fixed frequency, whilst normal and tangential loads are applied to the skin surface, transient mechanotransduction has been observed. The results demonstrate the effectiveness and feasibility of the preliminary prototype bio-hybrid tactile sensor.

During the last decades, tactile sensors based on different sensing principles have been developed due to the growing interest in robotics and, mainly, in medical applications. Several technological solutions have been employed to design tactile sensors; in particular, solutions based on microfabrication present several attractive features. Microfabrication technologies allow for developing miniaturized sensors with good performance in terms of metrological properties (e.g., accuracy, sensitivity, low power consumption, and frequency response). Small size and good metrological properties heighten the potential role of tactile sensors in medicine, making them especially attractive to be integrated in smart interfaces and microsurgical tools. This paper provides an overview of microfabricated tactile sensors, focusing on the mean principles of sensing, i.e., piezoresistive, piezoelectric and capacitive sensors. These sensors are employed for measuring contact properties, in particular...

The aim of this paper is to discuss an ideal design procedure for biologically-inspired artificial sensors. The main steps of this procedure are the following: (1) analysis of force and position sensors in animals and humans; (2) design and implementation of biologically-inspired sensors in innovative biorobotic and biomechatronic systems (e.g., antropomorphic robots, animaloids, and prostheses). According to this sequence, the first part of the paper is dedicated to the presentation of some features of force and motion sensors in animals and humans. Then, some applications of biologically-inspired systems to sense force and position in different robots are illustrated and discussed.

We can note that in these days touch screen technology began to flourish and it is more widely used both in hardware and in different applications. A touch screen based interface is beginning to be a basic requirement in almost every mobile appliance, and at the same time demand to equip other products with this technology is on the rise.

This work presents the design and fabrication of novel piezoelectric polymer-FET touch sensing devices. With thin piezoelectric polymer (PVDF-TrFE) film directly spun and processed in situ on the gate area of MOS transistor, the device can also be called as POSFET (Piezoelectric Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor) touch sensing device. The integral POSFET ldquosensotronicsrdquo unit, comprising of transducer and the transistor, senses and conditions the signal atsame site'. Challenging issues like in situ ...

Scrolling interactions are an important aspect of the design of usable touchscreen interfaces, particularly for handheld devices that can only display a limited amount of information at once. Using a touchscreen capable of dynamically altering its surface friction, we explore the design space of haptically-augmented scrolling interactions and investigate programmable friction’s ability to provide appropriate feedback in envisioned usage scenarios. We performed five user experiments to evaluate respectively the identifiability of a set of iconic detents, the countability of detents, the perception of detent density, the synchronization of tactile feedback to on-screen events, and the optimal friction pattern for a spring-like resistance. The results of these experiments provide valuable information that will inform the design of scrolling interactions that leverage programmable friction for an improved user experience.