Capacitive sensor measurement rate improves by pre-stretching

摘要

Large-deformation capacitive stretch sensors have proven to be a reliable sensing method for soft robots and wearables. However, the measurement rate at which capacitance is accurately measured is often limited by the relatively high resistance of the conductive composite electrodes. At high measurement frequencies, the measured capacitance underestimates the real capacitance, resulting in inaccurate strain estimation. High measurement rates allow for fast sensor feedback, which is essential for closed loop control of fast moving systems. In this work, we show that the measurement rate of elastic capacitive sensors with conductive composite electrodes can be increased by cyclic pre-stretching of the sensors before each use.