<title>Novel design of a MEMS-based tactile sensor</title>

Abstract

This paper describes the design of a single chip magnetic field based tactile sensor for variety of applications, especially the robotic applications. The sensor can be fabricated using MEMS technology. The tactile sensor can measure both the normal and shear forces. The sensor makes use of a thin magnetic material sheets embedded in an elastomer. An array of magnetic field probes are placed below the magnetic material. The instrumentation or the signal processing circuitry could be placed below the magnetic field probes or placed next to the transduction layer. A computer aided-design study was carried out to understand the distribution of field patterns due to thin square magnetic sheets both singularly and in arrays. The choice of the optimum dimensions for the magnetic sheets, their spacing within the array, and their height from the magnetic field probes is presented.