A Full-Body Tactile Sensor Suit Using Electrically Conductive Fabric.

Abstract

We present design and implementation of a tactile sensor system, sensor suit, that covers the entire body of a robot. The sensor suit is designed to be soft and flexible and to have a large number of sensing regions by using electrically conductive fabric and string. The whole signals from the sensor suit are superimposed on a visual image of the robot. The construction of sensor suit with 160 sensing elements for a full-body humanoid and the experimental results to evaluate electrically conductive fabric and the tactile sensing unit are described.