Design of Flexible Tactile Sensor Based on Three-Component Force and Its Fabrication

This paper describes a design of a tactile sensor, which can measure three components forces. The bio-mimetic tactile sensor, alternative to human’s finger, is composed of 100 micro force sensors, and its size being 10 mm x 10 mm. Each micro force sensor has a square membrane, and its force capacity is 0.3 N in the three-axis directions. On the other hand, the measuring method of three-component force signals without interference was suggested in case of four strain gages and the number of minimum data lines. We have fabricated the tactile sensor using flexible MEMS technology based on polymer material.