Electronic Skin for Detections of Human-Robot Collision Force and Contact Position

Abstract

Nowadays, robots have been widely used in industrial, medical and service fields. With more and more applications of robots, safety in human-robot interaction becomes more important. As an excellent sensing element that can be attached onto mechanical arms of robots, electronic skin (e-skin) has attracted wide interests and been recognized having promising application prospects. However, existing electronic skins relying on multi-sensor array require complex structures and conditioning circuits, as well as complicated fabrication and assembly, which limits their applications to robots. In this paper, we propose an electronic skin based on thermosensation that has a simple structure and can be easily installed on a robotic arm to measure both collision force and position of collision point simultaneously and independently in human-robot interaction. Importantly, the e-skin has a high sensitivity and a broad measuring range, which demonstrates its promising potential in practical robotic application.