Detection of Slippage Using Flexible Tactile Sensor for a Robot Fingertip

Tactile sensor for detecting slip is essential to grasp an object safely in a robot hand with a complicated structure and various functions. In this paper, sensors with three patterns in different forms are designed to sense slip moment through a resistance change. The slip sensors developed in this paper have flexible and stretchable characteristics to be used on the robot hand surface. For realizing these characteristics, acrylonitrile-butadiene rubber (NBR) is used as a substrate of the sensor. Graphene material is employed bacause of suitable for flexible substrate as an electrode. An imprint process to produce a micro-unit sensor structure is newly developed. As a result, sensors can have an extremely small structure like human fingerprint. Experiments for performance of the developed sensors are conducted. In addition, a stretchable and fatigue tests are conducted to verify the performance of sensors with a flexible characteristic like the human skin.