Application of Electrical Impedance Tomography to Robotic Tactile Sensing

Abstract

ii Tactile sensors for artificial skin applications, based on sensing arrays, suffer from fragility, complex fabrication techniques and stiff characteristics. These critical limitations hinder their integration for artificial skin purposes. Eliminating the presence of wires within the active sensing area leads to improved robustness and reduced wiring. Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) was investigated for use as a pressure sensor with electrodes limited only to the boundary of the active sensor area for enhanced artificial skin implementation. A one-step regularized solver using the Difference Imaging method was used for pressure measurement and profile depiction. Firstly, EIT sensor applicability is tested through static planar compression experiments of a conductive polymer as well as woven and non-woven conductive fabric via a stacked contact resistance transducer approach. Corresponding 2D FEM’s with complete electrode boundary conditions for solving the EIT problem are developed in Electrical Impedance and Diffuse Optical Reconstruction software and the system configuration is