Measurement of flexible temperature-pressure distribution for robot sensing skin

Abstract

The design of flexible pressure and temperature sensor array, which will serve as the artificial skin for robot applications, is presented. Different conductive rubber，which has different kinds of conductive filler, is employed as the pressure and temperature sensing material. The pressure sensing material is carbon black (CB)/multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTS)/silicon rubber, the proportion of CB and CNTS is 6% and 4%, respectively. The temperature sensing material is carbon fiber/silicon rubber; the proportion of carbon fiber (CF) is 12%. Both of the materials are flexible enough to use as artificial skin. Small disks of pressure and temperature conductive rubber are bonded on predefined flexible interdigital copper array. The pressure and temperature sensitive properties of the sensor array are measured. The structure of the sensor array make the temperature sensing material doesn’t take any interference of pressure. The separate collection of pressure and temperature signals with the scanning circuits can effectively reduce the crosstalk between each sensing element. With this integrated sensor array, the images of pressure and temperature distribution have been successfully shown by LabVIEW. This flexible sensor array can be bended without any influence of performance, so the sensor array is flexible and sensitive enough to be used as robot skin.