Abstract
The practical utilization of soft nanocomposites as a strain mapping sensor in tactile sensors and artificial skins requires robustness for various contact conditions as well as low-cost fabrication process for large three dimensional surfaces. In this work, we propose a multi-point and multi-directional strain mapping sensor based on multiwall carbon nanotube (MWCNT)-silicone elastomer nanocomposites and anisotropic electrical impedance tomography (aEIT). Based on the anisotropic resistivity of the sensor, aEIT technique can reconstruct anisotropic resistivity distributions using electrodes around the sensor boundary. This strain mapping sensor successfully estimated stretch displacements (error of 0.54 ± 0.53 mm), surface normal forces (error of 0.61 ± 0.62 N), and multi-point contact locations (error of 1.88 ± 0.95 mm in 30 mm × 30 mm area for a planar shaped sensor and error of 4.80 ± 3.05 mm in 40 mm × 110 mm area for a three dimensional contoured sensor). In addition, the direction of lateral stretch was also identified by reconstructing anisotropic distributions of electrical resistivity. Finally, a soft human-machine interface device was demonstrated as a practical application of the developed sensor.
Highlights
The practical utilization of soft nanocomposites as a strain mapping sensor in tactile sensors and artificial skins requires robustness for various contact conditions as well as low-cost fabrication process for large three dimensional surfaces
We propose a multi-point and multi-directional strain mapping sensor based on multiwall carbon nanotube (MWCNT)-silicone elastomer nanocomposites and anisotropic electrical impedance tomography
From the scanning electron microscopic (SEM) images, we could observe that the MWCNTs were uniformly dispersed in random directions within the silicone elastomer matrix (Fig. 1f)
Summary
The practical utilization of soft nanocomposites as a strain mapping sensor in tactile sensors and artificial skins requires robustness for various contact conditions as well as low-cost fabrication process for large three dimensional surfaces. Organic field-effect transistor (OFET) integrated on stretchable substrates was introduced as a mean to reduce the number of stretchable electrodes and to acquire multi-directional tactile information[32,33] These works demonstrated large-area and stretchable electronics, repetitive and impulsive contact conditions can induce excessive mechanical stress to electronics and interconnections in practical applications such as human-like tactile sensing[3,4,34,35,36,37,38] and biomedical applications[35,39]. The aEIT method computes the multi-dimensional resistivity distribution within the nanocomposite, thereby the strain directions and contact locations on large curved surfaces can be accurately identified without using complicated arrays of flexible and stretchable electrodes fabricated along the entire sensor surface. We implemented a soft, three-dimensional human-machine interface device to control a robotic hand system
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