Soft Tactile Sensor Arrays for Force Feedback in Micromanipulation

This paper describes the design, fabrication, and experimental validation of a soft tactile sensor array for submillimeter contact localization and contact force measurement in micromanipulation. The geometry and placement of conductive liquid microchannels embedded within the elastic sensor body are optimized to provide high sensitivity for representative micromanipulation tasks and to overcome functional limitations seen in previous soft tactile sensor research. Mechanical testing of the numerically optimized sensor prototype demonstrates sensitivity to normal contact forces of < 50 mN and submillimeter contact localization resolution. Tactile sensing experiments demonstrate the ability to infer the abstract geometries and motions of objects imparting force on the sensor surface by analyzing microchannel deformation patterns.