Development of whisker inspired 3D multi-material printed flexible tactile sensors

In this paper a bio-inspired tactile whisker sensor made by 3D printing is discussed. Whisker inspired sensors were printed using flexible dielectric and conductive thermoplastic poly-urethane (TPU). The conductive TPU is used for strain-gauges facilitating resistive read-out. A single whisker sensor contains two strain-gauges allowing to determine both the force acting on the whisker as well as the contact point on the whisker. To the best of our knowledge this is the first work on 3D multi-material printed, flexible, whisker inspired tactile sensors.