Design and Fabrication of a Soft Magnetic Tactile Sensor

摘要

Tactile sensing has always been a challenging area for robotic systems. Tactile sensors are required to provide necessary feedback on the contact surface between the robot and the target object to ease the manipulation and mimic the human touch. This paper covers a soft magnetic tactile sensor’s design, calibration, and validation process. Employing the modeling techniques proposed in this study, one can easily adjust the mechanical characteristics of the sensor to meet the required specifications. A custom test rig is designed and built to apply known forces accurately and log the sensor’s output to perform the calibration process. Moreover, the sensor’s specifications and errors under high and low force slopes have been examined and reported. Finally, the sensor’s transfer function has been estimated using its step response.