A novel wearable tactile sensor array designed for fingertip motion recognition

Abstract

In this paper, a novel wearable tactile sensor array for fingertip motion recognition is proposed. The design of the sensor is presented that the tactile sensor array using conductive thread electrodes. The sensing points distributed in ring structure, the main sensing point of which is in the center and 24 secondary sensing points in the outer ring. It is more suitable for fingertip state recognition than the traditional rectangular array method. The circuit is designed with flexible printed circuit board, which is “T-type” and easy to assemble at the fingertips. We classify all fingertip motion into eight categories and it is validated that the properties of the sensor in an application for fingertip motion recognition is well. We represent the array if tactile information as a time series of features and use this as the input for classifier. It is demonstrated that the tactile sensor is high accuracy in identifying the categories of fingertip motion. The result is proved that this wearable tactile sensor array is stable performance and excellent flexibility. Furthermore, due to its good performance, it can be easily integrated onto a curved surface, such as robotic and prosthetic hands.