Development of Four-Axis Contact Force Sensor with a Flexible Contact Part

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a flexible contact force sensor that enables a robot to detect a contact location and measure four-axis contact force with environment. This sensor consists of two part: one is a flexible contact part which is composed of silicon rubber, and the other is a metallic plate. The structure of this sensor and a procedure for calculating contact location and four-axis contact forces are explained. We perform an experiment of grasping an object with a translational gripper equipped with the developed sensor. From this experiment, we confirm about that this sensor is useful in real grasping task, and that an optimal approaching velocity is increased owing to a flexible structure.