1P1-O03 Development of a MEMS Multilayer Array Type Tactile Sensor Usins PDMS Material

Abstract

In human skin, four kinds of tactile receptors (Meissner corpuscle, Merkel cell, Ruffini ending, and Pacinian corpuscle) are distributed three dimensionally, i.e., not only on the skin surface but also in the four corresponding depths of the skin. The final goal of this study is achieving a flexible tactile sensor having four layers imitating human skin. An array type tactile sensor made of PDMS, which is a kind of silicone rubber, is developed by MEMS technology. By stacking this sensor one by one, fabrication of a multilayer type sensor is possible in future. In this report, the concept of this sensor is proposed, an array sensor of one layer is fabricated, and the performance of one capacitive force sensing element is characterized preliminarily.