Title :
Wearable soft artificial skin for hand motion detection with embedded microfluidic strain sensing
Author :
Chossat, Jean-Baptiste ; Yiwei Tao ; Duchaine, Vincent ; Yong-Lae Park
Author_Institution :
Ecole de Technol. Super., Montréal, QC, Canada
Abstract :
This paper describes the design and manufacturing of soft artificial skin with an array of embedded soft strain sensors for detecting various hand gestures by measuring joint motions of five fingers. The proposed skin was made of a hyperelastic elastomer material with embedded microchannels filled with two different liquid conductors, an ionic liquid and a liquid metal. The ionic liquid microchannels were used to detect the mechanical strain changes of the sensing material, and the liquid metal microchannels were used as flexible and stretchable electrical wires for connecting the sensors to an external control circuit. The two heterogeneous liquid conductors were electrically interfaced through flexible conductive threads to prevent the two liquid from being intermixed. The skin device was connected to a computer through a microcontroller instrumentation circuit for reconstructing the 3-D hand motions graphically. The paper also presents preliminary calibration and experimental results.
Keywords :
calibration; conducting materials; elastomers; intelligent sensors; microchannel flow; microcontrollers; microsensors; motion measurement; sensor arrays; skin; strain measurement; strain sensors; wires (electric); 3D hand motion reconstruction; calibration; electrical wire; embedded microchannel; embedded microfluidic soft strain sensor array; external control circuit; hand gesture detection; hand motion detection; heterogeneous liquid conductor; hyperelastic elastomer material; ionic liquid microchannel; joint motion measurement; liquid metal microchannel; mechanical strain detection; microcontroller instrumentation circuit; wearable soft artificial skin; Joints; Liquids; Metals; Microchannels; Sensors; Skin; Strain;
Conference_Titel :
Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2015 IEEE International Conference on
Conference_Location :
Seattle, WA
DOI :
10.1109/ICRA.2015.7139544