Cylindrical Tactile Sensor for Robot Hand Using Position Sensitive Detectors.

Abstract

This paper proposes a cylindrical tactile sensor that can simultaneously detect the contact angle, the contact position and the magnitude of the contact force for robot hands. This sensor consists of an inner frame with light sources and an outer shell suspended by two elastic rings. Since a two-dimensional position sensitive detector (PSD) is installed at the same section of the elastic ring, the output of the PSD directly corresponds to the displacement of the elastic ring. It was confirmed experimentally that the measurements concerning the contact angle, the contact position, and the magnitude of the contact force could be carried out with good accuracy by means of simple expressions. Consequently, this cylindrical tactile sensor is considered to be effective as the tactile sensor for robot hands.