Abstract
Sliding tactile perception is a basic function for human beings to determine the mechanical properties of object surfaces and recognize materials. Imitating this process, this paper proposes a novel finger-shaped tactile sensor based on a thin piezoelectric polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) film for surface texture measurement. A parallelogram mechanism is designed to ensure that the sensor applies a constant contact force perpendicular to the object surface, and a 2-dimensional movable mechanical structure is utilized to generate the relative motion at a certain speed between the sensor and the object surface. By controlling the 2-dimensional motion of the finger-shaped sensor along the object surface, small height/depth variation of surface texture changes the output charge of PVDF film then surface texture can be measured. In this paper, the finger-shaped tactile sensor is used to evaluate and classify five different kinds of linen. Fast Fourier Transformation (FFT) is utilized to get original attribute data of surface in the frequency domain, and principal component analysis (PCA) is used to compress the attribute data and extract feature information. Finally, low dimensional features are classified by Support Vector Machine (SVM). The experimental results show that this finger-shaped tactile sensor is effective and high accurate for discriminating the five textures.
Highlights
Tactile sensation which means feeling objects by touch is one of the most important factors to sense the environment and obtain information
We use principal component analysis (PCA) to reduce the dimension of features in the frequency domain
We have developed a novel finger-shaped tactile sensor for evaluating fabric surfaces by imitating the human active touching process
Summary
Tactile sensation which means feeling objects by touch is one of the most important factors to sense the environment and obtain information. Studying on tactile sensors which can detect the surfaces of objects and extract features of materials is very valuable. In virtual reality, such as a digital museum project, shapes and textures of the cultural artifact are important to archive and represent haptic impression [2]. In the field of robotics, intelligent robots with tactile sensors can be used to provide more information about surface texture and assist in object recognition tasks [3,4]. Tactile sensors are useful for evaluating fabric surfaces because extracting and comparing fabric surface properties accurately can lead to a more stable textile product quality and reduce the costs of production and inspection [5]
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