Development of a micro tactile sensor utilizing piezoresistors and characterization of its performance

Abstract

An advanced tactile sensor is strongly desired now for the purpose of realizing complicated assembly tasks of a robot, recognizing objects in the space where vision sensor cannot be used. Besides industry, development of a robot hand will become more important to realize human-like robots, such as a humanoid. To give a tactile sense like human to a robot's fingertip, development of the tactile sensor with high performance would be required in the near future. The chapter discusses that micro tactile sensors of high performance equal to a human being are now desired for robot application, in which the skillful and dexterous motion like a human being is necessary. In this research, piezoresistors are made on a diaphragm to detect the distortion of it, which is caused by a force input to a pillar on the diaphragm. Three components of the force in x, y, and z direction can be simultaneously detected in this sensor. The concept is proposed and its measuring principle is confirmed by using finite element method (FEM) simulation. Also a practical sensor chip is fabricated by micromachining process and characterization of its performance is reported.