Design and implementation of a three-axis force sensor for applications to bilateral teleoperation systems

In this paper, we have introduced the development of a low-cost and light-weight three-axes force sensor to be used under small loading forces. The proposed sensor was able to measure applied force by simply using single-axis contact sensors. The force sensor is a combination of 3D printed rigid parts, contact force sensors, signal transmitters, and an Arduino microcontroller. After calibration through simple linear regression, experiments with this new force sensor on static operating force were accurately achieved with small measurement tolerance. The developed force sensor was further applied to bilateral teleoperation systems to measure the external force exerted by the human operator and from the remote environment. The experimental results displayed a satisfactory performance of the teleoperation system using the proposed force sensor.