Robot fingertip with tactile sensation: design, fabrication and testing

Recent progress in robotic industry has increased efforts on robot ability enhancement to use them in factories and services instead of labors and human workers. One of the important ability which plays an important role to reach this aim, is tactile sensation which is not compensated by other ability including image processing. In this paper, a robot fingertip with tactile sensation is designed and fabricated which has a configuration very close to human fingertip for griping or other robotic applications. This fingertip consists of rigid body and elastic flexible cover which the area between these two parts is filled with a fluid which is connected to the pressure sensor. When the elastic cover which plays a skin role, touch the external body, regarding to the speed and amplitude of touch, the reaction of the cover is transferred to the fluid and also pressure sensor. Pressure sensor sense the pressure change and convert this to the output voltage which is detectable by designed electrical circuit. Outer layer of the elastic cover is corrugated to increase sensitivity of the sensor. The fabricated tactile sensor was tested to verify its performance in different experiments which was in good agreement with our expectation.