Design of tactile sensor array on electric gripper jaws for wire gripping recognition

In this study, we proposed an electric gripper jaw with tactile sensor array for wire harness applications. The tactile sensor is made of piezoresistive material through screen printing technology. The array is fabricated on a flexible film (20mm × 20mm × 250μm) and contains 100 sensor cells (1.3mm × 1.3mm). The pressure range of the tactile sensor is 10 to 580 psi. The sensors were modularized and embedded onto electric gripper jaws to locate and recognize the gripped wires. The fuzzy c-regression models (FCRM) clustering algorithm was applied to deal with ambiguous gripping situations such as multiple or bending wires. Experiment results demonstrated the effectiveness and the feasibility of the presented approach. The overall system is at the same time highly sensitive and robust, cheap to manufacture and can be made to have almost any size and shape for industrial purpose.