Design of a small-scale tactile sensor with three sensing points for using in robotic fingertips

This paper describes our initial research on development of a tactile sensor, which can be employed in anthropomorphic soft fingertips, with multi-sensing points that uses 3-DOF micro force moment sensing chips (MFMS) which are able to measure forces up to nearly a Newton. Three sensing points are integrated on a compact printed circuit board with an in-built multiplexer circuit for the purpose of saving energy and reducing the number of outputs. This system was designed for the purpose of manipulating small-scaled objects, and realizing special characteristics of the objects such as distribution of edges/borders. The process including design, fabrication, and calibration will be explained in detail in this paper.