Paper-Based Piezoresistive Force Encoder for Soft Robotic Applications

Abstract

This work demonstrates the design, implementation, and experimental results of a low-cost disposable flexible sensor system capable of both impact localization and measurement. The proposed flexible sensor structure utilizes a special series of Bristol paper as the main fabrication material, which is coated with electric paint graphite paste and silver paste. The implemented sensor system uses a planar absolute encoder-like sensing topology to locate the impact and has a low-cost and quick manufacturing process. The size of the structure is 210 x 18.56 mm with a thickness of approximately 340 mu m. It has an electronic read-out consisting of three identical Wheatstone bridge circuits and instrumentation amplifiers for each bit. It can detect the external forces in the range of 0.6N to 12N with a spatial resolution of 2.4 cm and 0.55 cm in horizontal and vertical axes, respectively. The proposed sensor structure is tested in a series of experiments using a robotic setup consisted of a pantograph mechanism and a direct drive linear motor. The experiments illustrate the results with measurement sensitivity as small as 1N and proper fatigue resilience against repetitive loads.