Multi-functional sensing approach for material discriminating with a single sensor

The aim of this study is to apply a tactile sensor imitating the human hand to an engineering system. In this paper, a new structure of a multifunctional sensor is proposed. It is characterized by small sensing area and moving measurement method. A step-by-step method is used to realize the multifunctional sensing. In each step, different characteristics are sensed. By analyzing the outputs of the sensor, three material properties, i.e. metal or nonmetal, hard or soft, and curved or plane surface, and the environment temperature can be obtained. A detailed analysis of the step-by-step method to sensor is made.