Finger-inspired rigid-soft hybrid tactile sensor with superior sensitivity at high frequency

Jinhui Zhang; Haimin Yao; Jiaying Mo; Songyue Chen; Yu Xie; Shenglin Ma; Rui Chen; Tao Luo; Weisong Ling; Lifeng Qin; Zuankai Wang; Wei Zhou

doi:10.1038/s41467-022-32827-7

Finger-inspired rigid-soft hybrid tactile sensor with superior sensitivity at high frequency

Nat Commun. 2022 Aug 29;13(1):5076. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-32827-7.

Authors

Jinhui Zhang¹, Haimin Yao², Jiaying Mo^{3

4}, Songyue Chen¹, Yu Xie¹, Shenglin Ma¹, Rui Chen¹, Tao Luo¹, Weisong Ling¹, Lifeng Qin⁵, Zuankai Wang⁶, Wei Zhou⁷

Affiliations

¹ Department of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361102, China.
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China.
³ Department of Mechanical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 999077, China.
⁴ Hong Kong Centre for Cerebro-Caradiovasular Health Engineering (COCHE), Hong Kong, 999077, China.
⁵ Department of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361102, China. liq@xmu.edu.cn.
⁶ Department of Mechanical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 999077, China. zuanwang@cityu.edu.hk.
⁷ Department of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361102, China. weizhou@xmu.edu.cn.

Abstract

Among kinds of flexible tactile sensors, piezoelectric tactile sensor has the advantage of fast response for dynamic force detection. However, it suffers from low sensitivity at high-frequency dynamic stimuli. Here, inspired by finger structure-rigid skeleton embedded in muscle, we report a piezoelectric tactile sensor using a rigid-soft hybrid force-transmission-layer in combination with a soft bottom substrate, which not only greatly enhances the force transmission, but also triggers a significantly magnified effect in d₃₁ working mode of the piezoelectric sensory layer, instead of conventional d₃₃ mode. Experiments show that this sensor exhibits a super-high sensitivity of 346.5 pC N^-1 (@ 30 Hz), wide bandwidth of 5-600 Hz and a linear force detection range of 0.009-4.3 N, which is ~17 times the theoretical sensitivity of d₃₃ mode. Furthermore, the sensor is able to detect multiple force directions with high reliability, and shows great potential in robotic dynamic tactile sensing.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Fingers
Mechanical Phenomena
Reproducibility of Results
Robotics*
Touch*