Experimental evaluation of sealing materials in 6-axis force/torque sensors for underwater applications

Abstract

In this paper, the effects of sealing materials on the performance of an optoelectronic Force/Torque (F/T) sensor designed for underwater robotic applications are investigated. The design of the sensor has been conceived to exhibit a considerable compliance if compared to commercial F/T sensors, such as the ones for industrial applications. Moreover, optoelectronic components have been used as sensible elements for the sensor development, allowing a relatively simple and quite reliable implementation. In particular, these properties are introduced to deal with uncertain environments and to ease the sensor integration in complex robotic systems, such as in the fingers of robotic a gripper for underwater applications. After a brief introduction of the robotic gripper this sensor is designed for, the paper presents the basic working principle and the design of the proposed F/T sensor, and its main features are illustrate and discussed by means of experimental data. Finally, the evaluation of the sensor as an intrinsic tactile sensor is investigated and experimentally validated, and the sensor performance are compared considering different materials for the sealing, with particular attention on dynamic application like slip detection.