Flexible micro-tactile sensor for normal and shear elasticity measurements

Abstract

This paper presents a tactile sensor capable of in-vivo measurement of Young's modulus and shear modulus of elasticity for soft tissue and other materials. The sensor is built by using polydimethylsiloxane as the structural material. A number of sensing cells of different stiffnesses are used in each sensor. The Young's modulus of the targeted object can be measured based on the relative deflections of adjacent sensing cells. The shear modulus measurement is enabled by using a quad electrode structure in each sensing cell. Experimental results show sensing resolution of 0.1MPa for Young's modulus measurement from 0.1MPa to 1MPa, and 0.05MPa for shear modulus measurement from 0.05MPa to 0.2MPa.