Design of a Force/Tactile Sensor for Robotic Grippers

Marco Costanzo,Giuseppe De Maria,Ciro Natale,Salvatore Pirozzi

doi:10.3390/proceedings2019015031

Abstract

This paper presents the design of a new force/tactile sensor for robotic applications. The sensor is suitably designed to provide the robotic grasping device with a sensory system mimicking the human sense of touch, namely, a device sensitive to contact forces, object slip and object geometry. This type of perception information is of paramount importance not only in dexterous manipulation but even in simple grasping task, especially when objects are fragile and deformable, such that only a minimum amount of grasping force can be applied to hold the object without damaging it.

Highlights

The ability of modern robots to grasp and manipulate objects in a dexterous way is far from the human manipulation skills
Such feature requires the capability to control the grasping force, which requires proper measurement of contact forces and moments as well as contact locations. These kind of measurement can be performed with the combined use of tactile and force sensors [1] or by resorting to integrated force/tactile sensors [2]. This kind of sensor has been integrated into commercial parallel grippers for controlling both linear and rotational slippage of rigid objects of parallelepiped shape [3] demonstrating that it allows safe grasping under uncertain conditions
This goal leads to the need of a soft contact surface so that significant torsional moments can be held by the sensor

Summary

Introduction

The ability of modern robots to grasp and manipulate objects in a dexterous way is far from the human manipulation skills. This kind of sensor has been integrated into commercial parallel grippers for controlling both linear and rotational slippage of rigid objects of parallelepiped shape [3] demonstrating that it allows safe grasping under uncertain conditions. The basic idea foresees a suitably designed deformable layer positioned above a discrete number of sensible points (called “taxels”), in order to transduce the external force and moment, applied to the sensor, into deformations, which are measured by the taxels.

Results

Conclusion