An intrinsically embedded pressure-temperature dual-mode soft sensor towards soft robotics

Abstract

Soft sensing is indispensable for precisely manipulate and recognize objects in soft robotics. However, it is a challenge to better integrate soft robots with soft sensors because the sensing performances of soft sensors will be induced by mechanical stress and deformation to change and degrade. Herein, we propose a new design of intrinsically embedded pressure-temperature dual-mode soft sensors in soft robots to sense external stimuli. The soft sensor consists of a skin-inspired structure, the chief material prepared is equivalent to that of the soft robot, with high sensitivity, excellent repeatability and robustness. It can perceive the pressure and temperature of objects simultaneously and independently without mutual interference. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the soft sensor integrates with different soft robots to recognize the size, weight, temperature variation and hardness of the contact object. This work provides a new approach to integrate soft robots and soft sensors, which has great potential in vast robot-human and robot-environment applications.