Development of Soft Areal Tactile Sensors for Symbiotic Robots Using Semiconductor Pressure Sensors

Symbiotic robots, such as for nursing, which share humans' environments with and interact with them, should be covered with soft areal tactile sensors for safety and dexterous manipulation. We are developing such tactile sensors by embedding semiconductor pressure sensors into an elastic body. We have established a method for embedding an array of semiconductor pressure sensors in an elastic body using a flexible substrate. We have also proposed a structure of the elastic body consisting of soft and hard elastic materials for improving the sensitivity of our tactile sensors. In the present paper, we first describe the structure of our soft areal tactile sensors, and then report their trial fabrication, simulations and experimental results