A flexible and stretchable tactile sensor utilizing static electricity

The tactile sensor is required for various robots. In humanoid robots, flexibility of the sensor is an important feature for preventing physical damage and for interacting with the human. Moreover, stretchability of the sensor has advantages that the sensor is nonbreakable and that the sensor can be easily mounted on curved surfaces or deformable parts such as joints. This paper proposes a novel tactile sensor made of flexible and stretchable silicone rubber. A structure of the sensor is similar to the capacitive tactile sensors. However, the proposed sensor utilizes a different principle from existing sensors. The sensor utilizes static electricity and electrostatic induction phenomenon, and can detect some touch conditions. This paper reports the principle and characteristics of the proposed sensor. Experiments show that the sensor output depends on touch area, touch velocity, and material of touch objects. However, the sensor does not depend on touch weight. Moreover, the experiment shows that even if the proposed sensor is stretched, it performs as the tactile sensor.