Development of a Flexible Tactile Sensor Array for Three-Dimensional Force Detection with High Sensitivity

Abstract

This work presents a flexible tactile sensor array utilizing carbon nanotubes and polydimethylsiloxane nanocomposite material with high sensitivity in three-dimensional force detection. An anomalous and porous microstructure was obtained by soft lithography process on the nanocomposite surface to enhance the sensitivity of the device. The sensitivity of the sensor array for normal pressure is 11.3 kPa ^-1 in the range of <; 200 Pa and the sensitivity for tangential force is more than 40.2 N ^-1 in the range of <; 0.05N and more than 1.6 N ^-1 within the range of 0.6 N. With simple manufacturing process, low production cost and a certain degree of flexibility, the proposed tactile sensor array has good performances in uniformity and repeatability.