PDMS membrane based force sensor: Basic structure design and assessment

Haptic is a tactile feedback technology which has the advantage of the sense of touch by applying forces, vibrations or motions to the user. To use the haptic device for remote control, it is need to sense the object. These sensors are called as haptic sensor, and it senses the magnitude, direction, and distribution of a force. The sensed force data are used to reproduce the boundary limit of remote user´s movement or the reactions from objects. We develop an elastic material based tactile sensor for sensing the reaction force and the shape of contact surface. Sensor surface is made of Poly-dimethylsiloxane(PDMS) and it has small patterns with chrome. The deformation of these patterns is calculated by computer vision. By this process we could know the amount force that gave from some object. We performed the experiment with force sensor to find the relationship between the force and deformation of surface.