Abstract
In this article, we report on a flexible sensor based on a sandpaper molded elastomer that simultaneously detects planar displacement, rotation angle, and vertical contact pressure. When displacement, rotation, and contact pressure are applied, the contact area between the translating top elastomer electrode and the stationary three bottom electrodes change characteristically depending on the movement, making it possible to distinguish between them. The sandpaper molded undulating surface of the elastomer reduces friction at the contact allowing the sensor not to affect the movement during measurement. The sensor showed a 0.25 mm−1 displacement sensitivity with a ±33 μm accuracy, a 0.027 degree−1 of rotation sensitivity with ~0.95 degree accuracy, and a 4.96 kP−1 of pressure sensitivity. For possible application to joint movement detection, we demonstrated that our sensor effectively detected the up-and-down motion of a human forefinger and the bending and straightening motion of a human arm.
Highlights
Many groups have reported on various motion sensors for possible real-time personal health monitoring, human-robot interfaces, and industrial robot applications [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
While there are human joints that only have a single axis of rotation such as the elbow, whose motion can be monitored by a single sensor, many joints—such as the finger socket, wrist, and shoulder joints—have multiple axes of rotation and requires simultaneous measurement of several displacement or rotation angle sensors to monitor their motion accurately [8,9]
While at the last bending cycle, the forearm could have twisted causing the measurement to read as 10 degree bending. These results shows that the ability of the dual electrode SMP (dSMP) sensor to detect displacement and rotation angle simultaneously will be a powerful tool for monitoring of human joint movement
Summary
Many groups have reported on various motion sensors for possible real-time personal health monitoring, human-robot interfaces, and industrial robot applications [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. While there are human joints that only have a single axis of rotation such as the elbow, whose motion can be monitored by a single sensor, many joints—such as the finger socket, wrist, and shoulder joints—have multiple axes of rotation and requires simultaneous measurement of several displacement or rotation angle sensors to monitor their motion accurately [8,9] For this purpose, there have been several reports of sensors that utilize capacitive and optical sensing schemes capable of monitoring multi-axis movements. We developed a simple sandpaper molded elastomer-based triple electrode sensor that can discriminate simultaneously between displacement, rotation angle, and applied tactile pressure. We developed a simple sandpaper molded elastomer-based triple electrode sensor simultaneously between displacement, rotation angle, and applied tactile pressure (see Figure 1). Figure1.1.AAschematic schematic diagram of triple the triple contact electrode sensor on sandpaper-molded elastomer
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