Anthropomorphic Soft Fingertip with Tactile Receptors in the Skin

Abstract

The manipulation ability of robotic fingers is too less than the human's ability. One of the reasons is that the sensing ability of the robotic finger is too poor. Tactile sensing is useful for obtaining the information about the object and contact conditions. To improve the manipulation ability of robotic fingers, this paper proposes a design of an anthropomorphic soft fingertip with distributed tactile receptors. The fingertip consists of two silicon rubber layers of different hardness containing two kinds of receptors, strain gauges and PVDF (polyvinylidene fluoride) films. The structure of the fingertip is similar to that of a human's; it consists of a bone, an inner, an outer layer, and randomly distributed receptors inside. Experimental results demonstrate the sensing ability of the fingertip: it can discriminate five different materials by pushing and rubbing the objects.