Interface for tactile sensors based on direct connection to a FPGA

Abstract

Tactile sensors are applied to different areas like robotics, medicine or virtual reality. Many of these sensors are based on piezoresistive films that cover an array of electrodes. This approach is simple and cheap and seems to be able to fit the requirements of applications like manipulation with robotic hands or grippers. Local preprocessing is a must in these systems to reduce errors and interferences and cope with the large amount of data from the sensor. This paper presents a circuitry based on a FPGA to implement the interface to the tactile sensor. The approach consists in a direct connection and can save area and get a more compact solution than other proposals that need more integrated circuits. Results from a first implementation based on a development board are shown to illustrate the feasibility of this strategy.