A fingertip force sensor for underwater dexterous hand

Abstract

In order to safely grasp an unknown object and accurately perceive its position in the fingers, a finger-tip force sensor which can detect the force and position simultaneously was developed for the underwater dexterous hand. This paper introduced the finger-tip force sensor model which was built by a cylinder elastic body. The principle of force measuring was analyzed theoretically, which proved the reason- ableness of the structure and the equation was inferred for measuring force. Because of nonlinear and coupling, a feedforward artificial neural network was employed to calibrate the sensor utilizing the data which were obtained from the tests. The characteristic tests of the sensor showed the maximum error was below 6% in force measurements and the maximum position error was Ф1.6 mm. Then, the ap- plication experiments were carried out and the results showed the finger system can track the expectation of force trajectory, which indi- cated measurement accuracy of the sensor met the demands of research on the underwater dexterous hand. What's more, the sensor struc- ture can compensate the effect of water pressure. So the sensor can be integrated into the finger of the underwater manipulator and used under the water.