A versatile tactile sensor system for covering large and curved surface areas

Most of today's robots, while being equipped with arrays of ever more impressive sensors, still lack a fundamental ability so readily available to biological systems: a sense of touch. With the exception of a few humanoid platforms tactile sensing is typically limited to small areas such as palms or finger tips. In this paper we present a tactile sensing system designed specifically to meet the needs of covering large, possibly curved surfaces of the robot. The sensors are at the same time highly sensitive and robust, cheap to manufacture and can be made to have almost any size and shape. As such the presented system can ideally complement existing systems and their high spatial resolution required in finger tips with a system providing highly sensitive and impact resistant coverage for the rest of the body.