An anthropomorphic robotic skin using highly twistable tactile sensing array

Abstract

The development of an anthropomorphic robot skin integrated with a large-area 16×16 highly-stretchable tactile sensing arrays is presented in this paper. Conventionally, the electrodes of flexible sensing array are vulnerable under highly-deforming and stretching. To address this problem, highly-stretchable spiral electrodes were proposed and developed. The reliability of electrodes or interconnects for flexible sensing arrays by this approach. In addition, a novel method, which can be used to fabricate an anthropomorphic skin, is proposed. Polydimethylsiloxsane (PDMS) is employed as the skin structure and conductive polymer is used as tactile sensing material. The corresponding scanning circuit is also designed and implemented. The electrical characteristic of conductive polymer is measured, and the tactile images induced by external applied pressure are successfully captured.