A modular and low-cost artificial skin for robotic applications

In this paper a novel modular artificial skin is presented. The skin is organized in a chain of optoelectronic sensor arrays that communicate with serial interconnections. The proposed solution is highly modular and scalable since each module can be removed and/or inserted in the chain without introducing any changing in the architecture of the skin or in the acquisition system. A sensor element is constituted by an emitter/receiver couple of optoelectronic devices covered by a silicone layer. An external force applied to the deformable layer is transduced into a vertical displacement measured by the optoelectronic couple. A skin module consists of n sensing elements and m modules can be interconnected in order to obtain a complete skin with n×m sensing elements. The use of inexpensive and off-the-shelf components allows to change the density of the sensing elements as needed, maintaining a low cost.