Abstract
Over the past few decades, tactile sensors have become an emerging field of research in both academia and industry. Recent advances have demonstrated application of tactile sensors in the area of biomedical engineering and opened up new opportunities for building multifunctional electronic skin (e‐skin) which is capable of imitating the human sense‐of‐touch for medical purposes. Analyses have shown that current smart tactile sensing technology has the advantages of high performance, low‐cost, time efficiency, and ease‐of‐fabrication. Tactile sensing systems have thus sufficiently matured for integration into several fields related to biomedical engineering. Furthermore, artificial intelligence has the potential for being applied in human‐machine interfacing, for instance, in medical robotic manipulation, especially during minimally invasive robotic surgery, where tactile sensing is usually a problem. In this survey, we present a comprehensive review of the state of the art of tactile sensors. We focus on the technical details of transduction mechanisms such as piezoresistivity, capacitance, piezoelectricity, and triboelectric and highlight the role of novel and commonly used materials in tactile sensing. In addition, we discuss contributions that have been reported in the field of biomedical engineering, which includes its present and future applications in building multifunctional e‐skins, human‐machine interfaces, and minimally invasive surgical robots. Finally, some challenges and notable improvements that have been made in the technical aspects of tactile sensing systems are reported.
Highlights
Human skin is the largest sensory system in the human body and contains a complex array of mechanoreceptors that perceive tactile sensation
Once the general principles of tactile sensing were discovered, they could be applied to enable robotic systems to interact with objects in their environment in a similar manner to humans, i.e., machines can analyze objects based on their physical properties such as pressure, dynamic strain, surface texture, and shear for recognition and interaction [2]. e interest in the sense-of-touch began in the late 1970s with several studies focusing on explaining its principles
Yamazaki et al [78] reported a tactile sensor that is based on heterocore fiber optics, with the design structure shown in Figure 4. e heterocore fiber optic converts the applied force into a bending curvature on a heterocore fiber optic sensor. e hemispheric tactile sensor can be used to detect surface roughness with periodic changes of less than 0.05 mm and a periodic pattern of 0.74 mm. is tactile sensor has the capability of hardness and texture detection for discriminating touched objects, which will allow it to be utilized in intelligent robots and tactile feedback for the detection of lumps in biomedical applications [78]
Summary
Human skin is the largest sensory system in the human body and contains a complex array of mechanoreceptors that perceive tactile sensation. Ese microfabrication technologies and integrated materials are focused towards the development of artificial skins with embedded tactile sensing, which will play important roles in the future of multifunctional e-skin, hand prosthetics, and soft robotics.
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