Application of Intelligent Flexible Skin Sensors for Interfacing with Robotic Pets

This paper describes the application of intelligent flexible skin sensors for interfacing with robotic pets. The new flexible sensor system includes a skin sensor and a fuzzy unit. The skin sensor is fabricated using MEMS technique and can be used to measure normal and shear forces, on curved surfaces due to the flexible structure design of the sensor array. Using these features, the flexible skin sensors are used to cover sensing surfaces of a robotic pet. The fuzzy unit receives the outputs of the sensors and then determines the touching force information applied to the robotic pet. The robotic pet can then recognize the moods, intentions and behaviours of the human host based on the sensed touching force information so as to react to the human host with preprogrammed responses. Analysis and experiments demonstrate that the flexible skin sensor system can serve as an effective interface between robotic pet and their human hosts