A Flexible Sensor With Circumferential Negative Poisson’s Ratio Characteristics for Human Interaction

摘要

Flexible sensors have immense potential applications in fields like robot control, human interaction, and medical detection. However, obtaining sensors with excellent sensitivity and sensing range is a current challenge due to the limitations imposed by sensing principles and material characteristics. This article proposes a flexible sensor with circumferential negative Poisson’s ratio characteristics, created by embedding a specific skeleton structure. Compared to pure foam, composite foam’s sensing range improves to 150 kPa, a 2.06 times increase. Linear range and sensitivity of composite foam sensor also improve significantly, with linear sensitivities of 0.50 at 15%–40% strain and 1.17 at 65%–78%. The composite foam sensor also shows reliable stability and effective minimum load. The mechanical properties of the sensor materials were analyzed to obtain an explicit expression between the negative Poisson’s ratio structural parameters and compressive deformation, which is the theoretical basis for sensor structure design. Human interaction experiments demonstrate that the sensor has great potential for applications in human signal detection and intention recognition in medical detection.