Human‐Like Electronic Skin‐Integrated Soft Robotic Hand

Abstract

Human‐interactive soft robotic technologies have potential in numerous applications such as automatic home‐use robots, industrial systems, and Internet of Things (IoT) concepts. One approach to improve soft robotics is to integrate multiple soft sensors to monitor diverse information simultaneously, similar to human skin, without sacrificing mechanical flexibility and softness. This study reports multiple sensor integration, called an electronic skin (e‐skin), embedded in a pneumatic balloon‐based soft robotic hand. The sensors have good sensitivity to different stimuli but are insensitive to bending of the structure. By integrating multiple tactile force sensors (2 × 2 pixels), sliding or slipping movements of an object from a soft robotic hand can be monitored by measuring the time delay of tactile forces in the sensors as well as the tactile force generated by the pneumatic robot and external stimulus such as human contact. This information prevents the robotic hand from dropping an object by providing real‐time feedback, which is used to determine the tactile force. In addition to the fundamental characteristics, demonstration of pneumatic actuation and multiple sensing detections are successfully addressed as the first proof‐of‐concept.