Improvement of tactile capacitive sensors of the humanoid robot iCub´s fingertips

Humanoid robots use tactile fingertips to perform object manipulation. In this paper, an improved prototype of a tactile capacitive fingertip for the hands of the humanoid robot iCub is presented. In particular, a conductive silicone based material has been used to improve the characteristics of the capacitive sensor and an additional silicone foam layer has been also introduced in the sensor architecture to prevent behavior variation due to fingertip deterioration (e.g., caused by object manipulation). A characterization of the fingertip sensing behavior is presented. This work is funded by the European Commission as part of the project ICT-FP7-231500 RoboSKIN.