Design and Experiments of a Novel Halbach-Cylinder-Based Magnetic Skin: A Preliminary Study

Abstract

Robotic tactile sensing plays a vital role in realizing the precise perception of complex environments, affecting the application of robots in a wide range of industrial and household fields. However, existing tactile sensors are limited by weakly interpretable information mapping relationships. In this article, a novel Halbach-cylinder-based magnetic skin is constructed with permanent magnets and elastic rubber to address such problems. Furthermore, a highly interpretable and widely applicable method is deduced to effectively represent the skin’s information conversion as a Halbach cylinder deforms to an elliptical cylinder under external force. Experiments of simulated models and actual skins with different compressions are conducted to evaluate the proposed method. The results show that 0.24% and 0.26% relative errors in simulated and real environments, respectively, can be achieved. Our method can reach the minimum error in almost all situations compared with state-of-the-art approaches. These promising results demonstrate the method’s great potential to provide a basis for developing a practical magnetic-force mapping relationship.