GTac: A Biomimetic Tactile Sensor with Skin-like Heterogeneous Force Feedback for Robots

TL;DR

This paper introduces GTac, a biomimetic tactile sensor that mimics human skin's ability to perceive normal and shear forces, enabling robots to perform delicate tasks with enhanced tactile feedback.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel skin-like tactile sensor combining piezoresistive and Hall sensors for simultaneous force and direction sensing, advancing robotic tactile perception.

Findings

Successfully perceives normal and shear forces simultaneously

Enables robots to perform delicate tasks like egg grasping

Provides customizable tactile sensing solutions for robotics

Abstract

The tactile sensing capabilities of human hands are essential in performing daily activities. Simultaneously perceiving normal and shear forces via the mechanoreceptors integrated into the hands enables humans to achieve daily tasks like grasping delicate objects. In this paper, we design and fabricate a novel biomimetic tactile sensor with skin-like heterogeneity that perceives normal and shear contact forces simultaneously. It mimics the multilayers of mechanoreceptors by combining an extrinsic layer (piezoresistive sensors) and an intrinsic layer (a Hall sensor) so that it can perform estimation of contact force directions, locations, and joint-level torque. By integrating our sensors, a robotic gripper can obtain contact force feedback at fingertips; accordingly, robots can perform challenging tasks, such as tweezers usage, and egg grasping. This insightful sensor design can be customized and applied in different areas of robots and provide them with heterogeneous force sensing, potentially supporting robotics in acquiring skin-like tactile feedback.