Design and characterization papers of a novel six-axis accelerometer

External force at the end-effector is often required for the force control of robotic manipulator. In some cases, the force information measured by wrist force sensor consists of the external force and the undesired inertial force arising from the acceleration of the end-effector. Up to now, il: is still difficult to extract the external force exactly for the insufficiency of acceleration information. A novel six-axis accelerometer in. the type of dual annular membranes structure is presented in this paper. It can simultaneously measure all three linear acceleration components a_x, a_y, a_z, and three angular acceleration components a_x, a_y, a_z which can be used to extract the external forces. The Finite Element Method (FEM) simulations were carried out to optimize the configuration of strain gauges. The analysis of the rated strains and interference strains indicates that the accelerometer has a low level cross-sensitivity. The characteristic experiment shows that the linearity of the accelerometer is good with minor interference errors. It also reveals that the rated strains and interference strains are in good correspondence with the results from the FEM simulations.