Tactile and shear stress sensing array using capacitive mechanisms with floating electrodes

This work presents the development of a capacitive tactile and shear-stress sensing array which can be easily and reliably fabricated by using MEMS techniques and flexible printed circuit board (FPCB) technologies. The sensing array consists of two micromachined PDMS structures and an FPCB with sensing electrodes. Each shear sensing element comprises four capacitive sensing element arranged in 2×2 array, and each capacitive sensing element has two sensing electrodes and a common floating electrode. The proposed design can effectively reduce the complexity of the capacitor structure without compromise in sensitivity.