Distributed Measurement of Deformation Magnitude and Location with a Pair of Soft Sensors

Abstract

Skin‐like sensitivity, or the capability to recognize tactile information, is essential for future robots in elder care, search and rescue, entertainment and other applications involving unstructured environments. In this paper, we propose the design of a flexible one‐dimensional pressure‐sensing system that can localize deformation along a long strip and measure its magnitude with an integrated pair of sensors. The sensor system is fabricated with piezoresistive conductive foils and copper sheets encapsulated by adhesive tape with a total thickness of 0.7 mm. For the purpose of demonstration, the sensor is used to monitor the location and magnitude of kink deformation of an inflatable tube. Finite‐element modeling and simulation are conducted to investigate the behavior of the soft sensor system when subjected to kink deformation. The model‐predicted sensor output achieves good agreement with the experimental data for different deformation magnitudes. Finally, extensive experiments on a sensor prototype with dimensions of mounted on an inflatable tube are conducted to demonstrate the capability of the proposed scheme in simultaneous measurement of deformation location and magnitude. It is shown that the specific design approach minimizes the coupling of location and magnitude measurements, resulting in minimal complexity for data processing.