Design, construction & calibration of a novel Human-Robot Interaction 3-DOF force sensor

This paper addresses the development processes of a 3-DOF force sensor for Human-Robot Interaction applications. From Human-Robot Interaction standpoint, the force sensor should have the ability to be easily attached to a robot end-effector and provides the applied force vector´s components, including amount and direction. The proposed force sensor uses load cells to identify the amount of applied force in each direction independently which makes it more suitable for Human-Robot Interaction purposes. This paper also proposes a novel calibration setup to excite force sensors in all directions accurately. Once the output data of load cell of the force sensor is gathered, an experimental identification procedure based on Least Square method is applied in order to identify the output model of the sensor. Accomplishing the development process, a force sensor is produced with a reasonable precision of 0.1N in x and y-axes and 0.2N in z-axis, within a range of 5N which is suitable for Human-Robot Interaction applications.