Novel Response Acquisition Method for Enhancing Spatial Resolution in Capacitive Tactile Sensing Array

In this study, a novel response acquisition method was proposed and verified in a capacitive tactile sensing array, which collected signals from shared capacitors between two adjacent sensing units. In the proposed design, the electrodes of a capacitor exhibited intentional misalignments in the xy-plane and four types of misalignments existed in the array. The tactile sensing array was then numerically evaluated, fabricated, and demonstrated. With the proposed method, the previously undetectable normal force was resolvable with noticeable (at least 225%) spatial resolution enhancement. Because the composition of the sensing array, number of capacitors in the array, and electrode dimensions in the capacitors were all unaltered from the conventional design, high detection sensitivities (on average 3.261 pF/ N for the normal force) were obtained. Additionally, although the four types of sensing unit required four corresponding algorithms to derive the shear angles, results proved that the supportiveness was remained and accuracy was unaltered compared to existing similar works.