LSI Design for Sensing Data Transmission by Interruption in Tactile Sensor Systems

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel tactile sensor system, which acquires sensing data by interrupt data transmission from each tactile sensor element. The interrupt makes decentralized sensing data transmission. Compared with existing centralized tactile sensor systems, the system can handle a large amount of tactile sensor elements and attach the elements on the arbitrary surface of the robot, because decentralized serial bus communication and the integration of a MEMS sensor and a signal processing LSI realize low power consumption, high speed response and flexible network morphology. In this paper, we focus on system analysis and LSI design for the system. Experimental results show that response time and power consumption of a tactile sensor element, which is composed of a MEMS capacitive force sensor and a signal processing LSI, are 21μs and 2mW, respectively. The computational experiments proved that more than thousands of the elements can be mounted in the system.