3D Force Sensor Designed Using Pressure Sensitive Electric Conductive Rubber

To perform 3D ground reaction force measurements with a comfortable interface for human foot, this paper presents a new 3D force sensor designed using pressure sensitive electric conductive rubber (PSECR). A parallel support flexible mechanism was firstly proposed for sensing impact forces and moments. Finite element analysis was conducted for optimization design of sensor structure dimensions. Sensitivity of the 3D force sensor was improved by distributing sensing cells on the maximum strain positions. A compact electrical hardware system including amplifiers module, conditioning circuits and a micro-computer controller was developed and integrated into the force sensor. Calibration experiments were conducted, in which a force plate was used as verification measurement device. The experimental results showed that correlation coefficients of two sensor systems for the vertical force and horizontal force measurements were 0.95 and 0.81 respectively.