Soft Magnetic Powdery Sensor for Tactile Sensing
1
Waseda Research Institute for Science and Engineering, Waseda University, 3-4-1 Okubo, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 169-8555, Japan
2
School of Creative Science and Engineering, Waseda University, 3-4-1 Okubo, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 169-8555, Japan
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sensors 2019, 19(12), 2677; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19122677
Received: 28 March 2019 / Revised: 27 May 2019 / Accepted: 4 June 2019 / Published: 13 June 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tactile Sensors for Robotic Applications)
Soft resistive tactile sensors are versatile devices with applications in next-generation flexible electronics. We developed a novel type of soft resistive tactile sensor called a soft magnetic powdery sensor (soft-MPS) and evaluated its response characteristics. The soft-MPS comprises ferromagnetic powder that is immobilized in a liquid resin such as polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) after orienting in a magnetic field. On applying an external force to the sensor, the relative distance between particles changes, thereby affecting its resistance. Since the ferromagnetic powders are in contact from the initial state, they have the ability to detect small contact forces compared to conventional resistive sensors in which the conductive powder is dispersed in a flexible material. The sensor unit can be made in any shape by controlling the layout of the magnetic field. Soft-MPSs with different hardnesses that could detect small forces were fabricated. The soft-MPS could be applied to detect collisions in robot hands/arms or in ultra-sensitive touchscreen devices.
View Full-Text
▼
Show Figures
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Nagahama, S.; Migita, K.; Sugano, S. Soft Magnetic Powdery Sensor for Tactile Sensing. Sensors 2019, 19, 2677.
Show more citation formats
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.