Fabrication and Comparative Study on Sensing Characteristics of Soft Textile-Layered Tactile Sensors

The physical interaction of robots with its environment requires a touch sensory system to function effectively. This sensory system measures the robot-environment interactive force and pressure information that can be converted to electrical signals. We fabricated and compared a series of of electronic textile (e-textile) tactile sensors using flexible piezoresistive materials and two types of conductive textile materials with varying layer constructions. Compared with conventional rigid counterparts, the tactile sensors have advantages in terms of light weight, flexible simple design, high sensitivity, low power consumption, and stretchability and thus is operable at varying curvy surfaces and dynamic forces.