Conducting Rubber Force Sensor: Transient Characteristics and Radiation Heating Effect

Abstract

Compression force sensors are indispensable to tactile sensors in humanoid robots. We are investigating the application of low-cost electrically conducting rubber sheets to force sensors, of which the biggest problem is its poor reproducibility. We have found that the deposition of aluminum by a vacuum evaporation method shows such an excellent characteristic that the sensor can be used in a wide range under 10.33 N/cm2. In this article, we investigated time response of the sensors and also studied how the radiation heating during the vacuum evaporation process for Al deposition affected their sensing property. We found that the radiation heating induces deterioration from the point of view of standard deviation of the output voltage of the sensors at a transient region. We convince that a low-temperature Al deposition method should be developed to form electrodes on the electrical conducting rubber sensors.