Development of tactile sensor for detecting contact force and slip

In this paper, a fingertip tactile sensor is presented which can detect contact normal force as well as incipient slip. The sensor, based on polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF), and pressure variable resistor ink, is physically flexible enough to be deformed into any three-dimensional geometry. In order to detect incipient slip, a PVDF strip is arranged along the direction normal to the surface of the finger of the robot hand. Also, a thin flexible sensor to sense the static force as well as the contact location, is fabricated into an arrayed type using pressure variable resistor ink. In addition, a tactile sensing system is developed with miniaturized electronic hardware such as charge amplifier, signal processing unit etc., and it feasibility is validated experimentally.