Deformable sensors for soft robot by electrical impedance tomography

Soft robots are by now an established trend in the robotic community. They are made by soft, deformable materials that enable them to easily conform to unstructured environment like biological systems do. In order to control this ability, sensors that return information about their spatial configuration and feedbacks from the environments are needed. Common solutions consist in the use of traditional type of sensors that can limit the capabilities of the deformable material. A different type of sensor has to be developed in order to exploit all the features of the material used for the robot structure. In this paper a first step toward the development of a novel type of sensor that enables sensing capabilities without limiting the deformation property of the soft material is presented. The sensor is based on a imaging technique known as Electrical Impedance Tomography.