Simple, Low-Cost Fabrication of Soft Sensors for Shape Reconstruction

Abstract

Shape reconstruction by soft sensors may be useful in applications ranging from precision agriculture to haptics and factory automation due to the potential for low-cost fabrication, durable operation, and safe and compliant interaction. Current prevalent techniques, however, require expertise, expensive materials, and high-end processing equipment which limits both their transition to practice and their accessibility to researchers. To address this issue, we present easily accessible, low-cost, and rapid fabrication techniques for soft and resistive carbon composite sensors. We characterize their repeatability and durability in response to stretch up to 135%. We further show how this fabrication technique may be easily customized to two different applications, including a stretchable, tactile interface for passive sensing, and an active, soft pneumatic gripper that can fully encompass an object to reconstruct its shape. We complement these with simple control and analysis, and show how to achieve high relative accuracy, despite the high manufacturing tolerances of the sensors.