Improving Sensing Coverage and Compliance of 3D-Printed Artificial Skins Through Multi-Modal Sensing and Soft Materials

TL;DR

This paper introduces a multi-modal, soft, 3D-printed artificial skin integrating ToF and self-capacitance sensing for enhanced tactile and proximity coverage, demonstrating improved contact detection and scene reconstruction.

Contribution

It presents a novel hybrid sensing skin with soft coverings and integrated electrical interface, advancing the practicality of 3D-printed artificial skins.

Findings

Multi-modal sensing enables contact detection and scene reconstruction.

Soft coverings improve impact absorption and tactile response.

Deployment on a robot arm demonstrates real-world applicability.

Abstract

3D-printed artificial skins are a scalable approach to whole-body tactile and proximity coverage, but prior implementations have been limited to unimodal sensing and rigid materials. To improve the practical usability of 3D-printed artificial skins, we present a hybrid time-of-flight (ToF) and self-capacitance (SC) sensing skin that demonstrates multi-modal sensing integration, soft compliant coverings for impact absorption and pressure sensing, and a streamlined electrical interface between printed conductive traces and external electronics. We show that combining ToF and SC modalities enables contact detection, scene reconstruction, and pressure-correlated tactile responses with the compliant covering by deploying six artificial skin units with 40 sensing elements over an FR3 robot arm.