The design and fabrication of a flexible three-dimensional force sensor skin

To obtain shear and normal stress information on non-planar surfaces has long been a significant challenge. This paper described a new version of flexible tactile sensor skin for three-dimensional force measurement. The sensor array has been fabricated by MEMS technology. The sensor skin which can be bended 90/spl deg/ includes 4/spl times/4 force sensor cells. Each cell is hybrid integrated to flexible printing circuit board which consists of a E-shape diaphragm (50 /spl mu/m thick and 4000 /spl mu/m wide). Each cell exhibits a sensitivity of 228 mv/N to normal force and 34 mv/N to shear force in the designed force range of 2N. Design analysis, fabrication processes, and experimental results are presented in this paper.