Stretchable tactile sensing skin for intelligent prosthetic limbs

Abstract

In this work, we report for a first time a stretchable tactile sensing skin that senses distributed contact force and is capable of conforming to curved surfaces, such as those of prosthetic limbs. The sensor comprises of three elements – substrates, force transduction elements and electric leads. All these elements are stretchable. The 2D force sensing array consists of 14 nodes spreading over an area of 4cm×7cm. We demonstrate here that the sensor skin can endure up to 8% of tensile strain repeatedly while the metal conductors are fully functioning, and with a detection limit of 1.57 mN normal force. The initial feasibility study shows promise for integrating such skin with a prosthetic limb part.