Multimodal electronic skin integrated with 3-D force detection and high precision position estimation

Abstract

This paper proposed a novel electronic skin, which can detect 3-D force, and estimate accurate touch position at the same time. The proposed multimodal electronic skin is designed to capacitive sensing mechanism. Through the densely covered driving electrode, the detection area is divided into a number of staggered subareas. When the contact point is transferred from one subarea to another, outputs of the adjacent subareas change regularly. Then contact position can be estimated. Pressure sensitive layer is designed to needle shaped structure to increase the range and sensitivity of tactile sensor. After measurement, pressure change and slip of touch point can be detected simultaneously.