Novel type of fabric tactile sensor made from artificial hollow fiber

We proposed an artificial hollow fiber structure as a new material for MEMS, and applied it for realizing a novel type of fabric tactile sensor. The hollow fiber structure is fabricated from commercially available silicone rubber tube by laminating a metal and an insulation layers on the surface. The fabricated hollow fiber is 250 mum in external diameter and 40 mum in thickness. The fabric tactile sensor is produced by weaving the hollow fibers like a cloth. Contact force on the sensor is detected by measuring the capacitance change at the intersection of two intersected fibers. The sensor detects the 2D contact-force distribution by sequentially scanning the capacitances at all fiber intersection points. The advantage of this novel fabric tactile sensor is that it can realize a genuine wearable sensor by directly weaving artificial fibers. In the present study, we fabricated artificial hollow fibers by thin-film deposition, and created a fabric tactile sensor by weaving the hollow fibers by hand. We confirmed the developed fabric tactile sensor can detect the contact force by measuring the capacitance change between the intersecting hollow fibers.