Abstract
A pressure tactile sensor based on the fiber Bragg grating (FBG) array is introduced in this paper, and the numerical simulation of its elastic body was implemented by finite element software (ANSYS). On the basis of simulation, fiber Bragg grating strings were implanted in flexible silicone to realize the sensor fabrication process, and a testing system was built. A series of calibration tests were done via the high precision universal press machine. The tactile sensor array perceived external pressure, which is demodulated by the fiber grating demodulation instrument, and three-dimension pictures were programmed to display visually the position and size. At the same time, a dynamic contact experiment of the sensor was conducted for simulating robot encountering other objects in the unknown environment. The experimental results show that the sensor has good linearity, repeatability, and has the good effect of dynamic response, and its pressure sensitivity was 0.03 nm/N. In addition, the sensor also has advantages of anti-electromagnetic interference, good flexibility, simple structure, low cost and so on, which is expected to be used in the wearable artificial skin in the future.
Highlights
In the industrial automation system, robot is playing an increasingly important role in some high risk, high difficulty, and repetitive works in order to improve the productivity, but inevitably robots need to contact with a variety of objects in the complex work environment and will encounter many unexpected obstacles [1], which requires the robots having good ability of tactile perception
The tactile sensor array with the large and flexible area can cover the surface of the robot and can be used in quantitative detection of the external physical quantity, different from the human skin which can only sense the external environment in a qualitative manner [1]
The length of the gate region of these fiber Bragg grating (FBG) is all 10 mm. These FBG sensing units based on the wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technology are ideally suitable for distributed strain monitoring, as FBG sensors are multiplexed and offer many advantages such as linear response and relative measurement
Summary
In the industrial automation system, robot is playing an increasingly important role in some high risk, high difficulty, and repetitive works in order to improve the productivity, but inevitably robots need to contact with a variety of objects in the complex work environment and will encounter many unexpected obstacles [1], which requires the robots having good ability of tactile perception. The tactile sensor array with the large and flexible area can cover the surface of the robot and can be used in quantitative detection of the external physical quantity, different from the human skin which can only sense the external environment in a qualitative manner [1]. Optical fiber offers an effective sensing method with small sensors for its small diameter, light weight, anti-electromagnetic interference, and suitability for large area array. These are some of the reasons why optical fibers are used in many sensing applications. We optimize FBG tactile sensor array units design through the ANSYS modeling and analysis which achieves good results
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