Mechatronic fingernail with static and dynamic force sensing

Our fingernails help us to accomplish a variety of manual tasks, but surprisingly only a few robotic hands are equipped with nails. In this paper, we present a sensorized fingernail for mechatronic hands that can capture static and dynamic interaction forces with the nail. Over the course of several iterations, we have developed a very compact working prototype that fits together with our previously developed multi-cell tactile fingertip sensor into the cavity of the distal phalange of a human-sized robotic hand. We present the construction details, list the key performance characteristics and demonstrate an example application of finding the end of an adhesive tape roll using the signals captured by the sensors integrated in the nail. We conclude with a discussion about improvement ideas for future versions.