Tactile proximity sensors for robotic applications

In this paper tactile proximity sensors for close human-robot interactions based on a previously developed sensor are introduced. Using the same sensing technology, we developed large area tactile proximity sensors as a robot skin and small sensors which we have integrated in an anthropomorphic robot hand. Tactile sensing in the area of robotics for close human-interaction is still a challenging task. In the most cases tactile sensors need to be supported by other sensor modalities to perceive the robots environment before contacts occur. To overcome this issue we developed tactile proximity sensors for robot surfaces and for robot grippers. Both sensors, their behaviour and a model of the tactile sensor will be discussed in this paper.