Study on Low-Cost Soft Tactile Sensor using Light Intensity Detector and Sponge: Basic Experiments

Tactile sensors have many potential uses and are expected to benefit various fields. It is promising that they will be gradually used not only for medical applications, but also input devices as well as contact sensors for robots. If a tactile sensor is applied to various forms of human-machine interaction, not only it is important to have softness from the viewpoint of comfort and safety, but also it is necessary to be customized easily and realized with low cost. The purpose of this study is to develop low-cost soft tactile sensor using a light intensity detector and a sponge. To do this, we examine the relationship between the extent to which the sponge is depressed and white light interference in this study. We fixed the LED and light intensity detector under a general soft sponge. The light intensity of the LED light, which is a white light, was measured by selective reflection through a soft medium with a light intensity detector. We measured the change of light intensity by varying the depth in the z-axis direction. As a result, it was possible to analyze the light intensity change according to the degree of pressing the medium.