Tactile Sensing Using Magnetic Foam

Gildas Diguet; Joerg Froemel; Masanori Muroyama; Koichi Ohtaka

doi:10.3390/polym14040834

Tactile Sensing Using Magnetic Foam

Polymers (Basel). 2022 Feb 21;14(4):834. doi: 10.3390/polym14040834.

Authors

Gildas Diguet^{1

2}, Joerg Froemel^{1

2}, Masanori Muroyama^{1

3

4}, Koichi Ohtaka⁵

Affiliations

¹ Division for the Establishment of Frontier Sciences, Organization for Advanced Studies, Tohoku University, 2-1-1 Katahira, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8577, Japan.
² Advanced Institute for Materials Research, Tohoku University, 2-1-1 Katahira, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8577, Japan.
³ Department of Robotics, Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, 6-6-01, Aza Aoba, Aramaki Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8579, Japan.
⁴ Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Tohoku Institute of Technology, Yagiyama Kasumi-cho 35-1, Taihaku-ku, Sendai 982-8577, Japan.
⁵ Micro System Integration Center, Tohoku University, 519-1176 Aza Aoba, Aramaki Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-0845, Japan.

Abstract

For biomedical applications, smart materials that are used as sensors or actuators have to match some criteria, especially bio-compatibility and softness. Smart polymers are candidates that fulfill these two criteria. A sensitivity to compression is created by adding magnetic particles to a compressible foam polymer. A foam-based composite is fabricated for its small Poisson's ratio, which enables significant compression, up to 50%. This large compression induces a change in its magnetic properties, which can be detected using coils. By setting the sensing coils as a compact array of 3 × 3, the sensor successfully detected and localized an applied deformation.

Keywords: artificial skin; deformation sensors; magnetic composite.