A Novel Tactile Sensor with Electromagnetic Induction and Its Application on Stick-Slip Interaction Detection.

Yanjie Liu,Jingang Yi,Qingguo Li,Tao Liu,Yoshio Inoue,Haijun Han

doi:10.3390/s16040430

Abstract

Real-time detection of contact states, such as stick-slip interaction between a robot and an object on its end effector, is crucial for the robot to grasp and manipulate the object steadily. This paper presents a novel tactile sensor based on electromagnetic induction and its application on stick-slip interaction. An equivalent cantilever-beam model of the tactile sensor was built and capable of constructing the relationship between the sensor output and the friction applied on the sensor. With the tactile sensor, a new method to detect stick-slip interaction on the contact surface between the object and the sensor is proposed based on the characteristics of friction change. Furthermore, a prototype was developed for a typical application, stable wafer transferring on a wafer transfer robot, by considering the spatial magnetic field distribution and the sensor size according to the requirements of wafer transfer. The experimental results validate the sensing mechanism of the tactile sensor and verify its feasibility of detecting stick-slip on the contact surface between the wafer and the sensor. The sensing mechanism also provides a new approach to detect the contact state on the soft-rigid surface in other robot-environment interaction systems.

Highlights

Robot-environment interaction is common in robotics applications [1], such as grasping and manipulating objects [2], bipedal walking [3], etc
We proposed a novel tactile sensor with electromagnetic induction for detecting the stick-slip interaction
The tactile sensor has a compact structure with a special design, inspired by a velocity sensor based on electromagnetic induction

Summary

Introduction

Robot-environment interaction is common in robotics applications [1], such as grasping and manipulating objects [2], bipedal walking [3], etc. A tactile sensors is a device or system capable of measuring the contact parameters between the sensor and an object [4], such as contact force and slippage, and provide an important approach for robots to sense the environment, like the sense of touch in humans. Slip sensing is an important approach to recognize incipient (or micro) and total (or macro) manipulation of an object relative to the sensor [11], which is crucial for stable grasping and manipulating of the object [12]. The first one is to estimate the friction coefficient or friction angle indirectly from normal and tangential forces, which

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Discussion

Conclusion