what means tactile sensing

Simply put, tactile sensing is defined as a haptic or cutaneous touch-based interaction with certain elements in the environment, which provide a measurable reaction or feedback. The interaction is in the form of physical touch, and the response by the targeted element is to provide a measure of pressure, vibration, temperature or texture.

Full Answer

How does tactile sensing work?

How It Works. Tactile sensing is the technology of mapping and measuring the contact mechanics between two objects. Tactile sensing is closely related to pressure and force. If you are searching for pressure measurement and mapping solutions, the two main types of sensors of interest are either capacitance-based or resistance-based.

What are some examples of tactile sensors?

Elevator button is also an example of a tactile sensor, tactile imaging is used for medical imaging purposes. Tactile sensors can also be used for vibration sensing.

What is the tactile system in the human body?

The Tactile System. Your sense of touch is called the tactile system. It’s how we feel all touch sensations, including vibrations, temperature, textures, and pain. We have receptors in our skin all over our bodies that send signals to our brains. These signals let us know when we’ve touched something, and what we’ve touched.

Where are tactile receptors located?

As you can see in the diagram, each tactile receptor is attached to the nerve cell. That’s because these receptors are specialized types of nerve endings. Meissner’s Corpuscle – These sensory receptors are located nearest to the skin’s surface. When these corpuscles are deformed by pressure, they send neural signals to the brain.

What type of sensor is tactile sensor?

A tactile sensor is also called a touch sensor. It is a type of device that captures and documents physical contact with an object. The touch sensor enables a device to detect the contact or close proximity of a general human user or operator.

What are the two types of tactile sensors?

There are two types of tactile sensing – kinesthetic sensing, which primarily detects internal forces, and cutaneous sensing, which, like skin, detects external forces. An example of kinesthetic sensing is human perception of muscle motion.

What is another name of the tactile sensor?

The other name for tactile sensors is touch sensors.

Where is tactile sensor used?

The sense of touch in humans is modeled based on the biological sense of touch provoked by the mechanical stimulation of the skin. Tactile sensors are used in robotics, computer hardware, and security systems. A common application of tactile sensors is in robotic hands and fingers (i.e. robotic tactile sensing).

How does tactile sensor work?

Tactile sensors are sensitive to touch, force or pressure, and are made using light (optical), electricity or magnetism. The stimulus-to-response pathways seen in electronic touch sensor operation mimics the human body process that involves our skin, signal transmission via the nervous system, and brain.

Who invented tactile sensor?

Piezoelectric Sensors. One of the first tactile sensor based on piezoelectric effect was developed by Ando and Shinoda [65] in 1994. The principle of measurement of this tactile transducer is based on acoustic ultrasonic sensing.

What is non tactile sensor?

Some sensors are non-contact. This means that the sensor is using a technology that uses non-touching parts. This term non-contact or non-contacting usually refers to a position sensor that can measure movement or displacement in a rotary or linear fashion.

What are the different types of touch sensors?

There are two common types of touch sensors/screens: capacitive and resistive.

What is touch and tactile sensors?

Touch and tactile sensor are devices which measures the parameters of a contact between the sensor and an object. This interaction obtained is confined to a small defined region. This contrasts with a force and torque sensor that measures the total forces being applied to an object.

Which of the following is correct for tactile sensors?

Which of the following is correct for tactile sensors? Explanation: Tactile sensors are those which sensitive to touch. Explanation: Sensitivity of a sensor is the change in output for a change in input. 3.

What is tactile array sensor?

The tactile sensor array features high flexibility and can be easily worn on robotic hand for grasping applications. • Both robotic grasping contact force sensing and slip detection can be achieved by the developed tactile sensor array. • A methodology to determine the threshold values for slip detection is developed.

What is the position sensor?

Position sensor is a device that can detect the movement of an object and converts these into signals suitable for processing, transmission, or control. TE Connectivity (TE) is a leading manufacturer of industrial linear and angular position, tilt and fluid level sensors.

Why are tactile sensors built on fabric?

Wearable tactile sensors are usually built on a skin-like elastic substrate or stretchable fabric to obtain flexibility and stretchability. With the rapid development of materials science, flexible electronics, and nanotechnology, the basic properties of the devices such as sensitivity, range, scale size, and spatial resolution have improved rapidly, even beyond the human skin. At the same time, in order to adapt to the sensing requirements of force, heat, moisture, gas, biological, chemical, and other multi-stimulus resolution, the device design is more and more sophisticated, and the integration scheme is more and more mature.

How does a capacitive tactile sensor work?

The principle of the capacitive tactile sensor is that the relative position between two pole plates changes under the action of external force, which leads to the change of capacitance, and the force information is obtained by detecting the amount of capacitance change.

Why is it important to develop new tactile sensors?

It is crucial to develop new tactile sensor devices that are wearable. It can adapt to arbitrary deformation of the substrate, and at the same time have accurate responses to a variety of irregular tactile stimuli. With the emergence of new functional materials such as graphene, carbon nanotubes, zinc oxide, and liquid metals, and the innovation of preparation technologies related to flexible electronics, the research of wearable tactile sensors has been rapidly developed in recent years.

How are piezoresistive sensors made?

Piezoresistive tactile sensors are made by using the resistivity of elastomeric materials to vary with the amount of pressure and change the pressure signal on the contact surface into an electrical signal.

What was the research in the 1980s?

The 1980s was a period of rapid growth in the research and development of tactile sensing technology for robots, during which a lot of research was done on sensor design, principles, and methods, mainly resistive, capacitive, piezoelectric, thermoelectric, magnetoelectric, force, optical, ultrasonic, and resistive strain principles and methods. In general, the research in the 1980s can be divided into three parts: sensor development, tactile data processing, and active tactile sensing, with the prominent feature of sensor device research centered on industrial automation.

How does a magnetically conductive sensor change?

The magnetic field of a magnetically conductive tactile sensor changes under the action of an external force and converts the change in the magnetic field into an electrical signal through a magnetic circuit system, thus sensing the pressure information on the contact surface.

What are the advantages of magnetically conductive tactile sensors?

Magnetically conductive tactile sensors have the advantages of high sensitivity and small size but are less practical than other types of robotic tactile sensors.

How does a tactile sensor work?

The working of this sensor is based on the change in electrical resistance between the conductor polymer and the electrodes. This type of tactile sensor is widely used. When the pressure has applied the resistance of the conductive material would change. Then the resistance would be measured. The advantages of this sensor are of high durability and good overload tolerance.

What is tactile sensor?

Basically a tactile sensor is a touch sensor that can provide information about the object which it.is in contact with it. The information about the object could be the shape, size, and type of material.

What are the different types of tactile sensors?

What are the types of tactile sensor. There are many types of tactile sensors like optical, piezoelectric, resistive, capacitive, magnetic and strain gauge.

What is the purpose of TPS in a cell phone?

Tactile sensors are able to detect the pressure in mobile phones finger-TPS is used to sense the force applied by the human hand.

Can a sensor be a single point contact?

It should be a single point contact, but the sensing area could be of any size if the size of the sensor is small then it can be easily used in many places. The sensitivity of this sensor is depended on a various physical characteristic, the physical barrier between the sensor and object would be a problem. For most industrial applications ...

Is voltage proportional to pressure?

The generation of voltage is proportional to the applied pressure. In this, there won’t be any need for an external sensor. The advantages of this type of sensor are durability and wide dynamic range. Measurement of pressure can be done.

Abstract

The ‘sense of touch has been used as a layman term in Chap. 1. However, ‘sense of touch’ and ‘tactile sensing’ are not same. This chapter provides the definitions of various terms associated with the touch sense modality. Generally, the ‘sense of touch’ in robotics gets inspiration from humans.

Definitions

The ‘sense of touch’ in humans comprises of two main submodalities—cutaneous and kinesthetic—characterized on the basis of their sensory inputs. Cutaneous sense receives sensory inputs from the receptors embedded in the skin and kinesthetic sense receives sensory inputs from the receptors within muscles, tendons and joints [ 1, 2 ].

Author information

Department of Biophysical & Electronic Engineering, University of Genova, Genova, Italy

How to build a tactile array sensor?

To build our Tactile Array Sensors, we arrange electrodes as orthogonal, overlapping strips separated by a proprietary compressible dielectric matrix, which acts as a spring. A distinct capacitor is formed at each point where the electrode strips overlap. Precision manufacturing techniques allow excellent repeatability and sensitivity, while advanced conductive materials allow for conformable, stretchable, industrial, and other hybrid sensor designs. By selectively scanning a single row and column, the capacitance, or local pressure, at that location is measured. Our proprietary drive and conditioning electronics can scan through an array at high speed while optimizing settings to achieve the maximum sensor response from each sensing element.

What is a tactile sensor?

Tactile sensing is the technology of mapping and measuring the contact mechanics between two objects. Tactile sensing is closely related to pressure and force. If you are searching for pressure measurement and mapping solutions, the two main types of sensors of interest are either capacitance-based or resistance-based. Whereas resistive sensors work by measuring changes in the resistance of a semi-conductive materials, capacitive sensors work by measuring changes in the gap distance between two electrodes. To function, the semi-conductive inks on a resistive sensor must go from a non-contacting state to a contacting state so the sensor performance is poor at low pressures. As the electrodes contact and rub against one another, the surface properties change on a microscopic level, which also changes the sensor behavior and thus requires frequent re-calibration or software compensation.

Why is capacitive sensing important?

The benefits of capacitive technology are that the two electrodes never touch and operate in an elastic region, so the sensor is more sensitive and stable. Another key benefit is that electrodes can be formed from any conductive material (conductive cloth, FPCB, metal fixtures) giving our sensors a wide range of design flexibility. Capacitive sensing has emerged as the preferred method for capturing contact-based pressure changes due to sensitivity, repeatability, stability and design flexibility.

How do capacitive sensors work?

Whereas resistive sensors work by measuring changes in the resistance of a semi-conductive materials, capacitive sensors work by measuring changes in the gap distance between two electrodes.

What is the measure of an object's ability to store electrical charge?

Capacitance is a measure of an object’s ability to store electrical charge and has been demonstrated countless times through the classic physics class example of two electrodes with area A separated by an air gap D as shown. As the air gap decreases, the capacitance C increases.

Is pressure a vector?

The more often-used terms " pressure " and " force " are related to " tactile ," but both cannot capture the full complexity of contact mechanics. "Pressure" is a scalar value capturing solely magnitude and "force" is a vector expressing magnitude and direction.

What is a Tactile or touch sensor?

The tactile Sensors measure touch information based on physical contact with the environment. The tough sensor architecture is based on biological skin touch sensing, which detects a range of mechanical stimulations, as well as temperature changes.

Operating Principle of of Tactile Sensor

The tactile sensors act as a switch. Upon contact, pressure, or force, they activate and behave like a switch. When contact pressure is released, and they behave like closed switches. The different types of tactile sensor functions on the following principles.

Basics of Tactile sensor

The term tactile sensor also refers to a touch sensor. Touch sensors are electronic sensors that detect touch. They behave like switches when the screen is touched. These are simple to design, inexpensive, and produced on a large scale. With advances in technology, sensors are quickly replaced by mechanical switches.

Capacitive Tactile Sensor

In this article, we discuss only capacitive sensors, because they are widely used. There are both analog and digital sensors available today. Sensors have brought about a revolutionary change in the size and cost of digital sensors available.

Working Principle of Capacitance type tactile sensor

Change of capacitance is proportional to the change in external pressure between the plates and hence compression characteristics of the dielectric material. A change of a small amount of capacitance is due to the change in distance between the plates.

Advantages of Capacitance Tactile sensor

The main advantage of this type of sensor is that it does not require physical contact to make the shot, it is enough to bring a finger within 1mm – 5mm of the sensor. For this reason, they are also called touchless devices.

Disadvantage of Capacitance Tactile sensor

A drawback of these sensors is that they can give a false alarm. They sensor operation is susceptible to noise.

How Does The Tactile System Work?

There are six different types of receptors in our skin that allow us to feel and perceive touch. These receptors are the main sensory cells in the tac tile system.

Why is the brain under-responsive to touch?

This occurs when the brain over- or under-responds to sensory input. Because different receptors detect and perceive different types of touch – it’s possible to be both under-responsive to certain types of touch and over-responsive to others.

Why are tactile receptors attached to nerve cells?

As you can see in the diagram, each tactile receptor is attached to the nerve cell. That’s because these receptors are specialized types of nerve endings.

What is the tactile system of a child?

When a child’s tactile system is working well , they can filter out irrelevant tactile input and respond to touch sensations appropriately. They should show a curiosity for touching and interacting with their environment but they should not be preoccupied with touch, or fearful of touch.

What is the sense of touch?

Your sense of touch is called the tactile system. It’s how we feel all touch sensations, including vibrations, temperature, textures, and pain. We have receptors in our skin all over our bodies that send signals to our brains. These signals let us know when we’ve touched something, and what we’ve touched. The Tactile System: How it Works, Signs of ...

What are the different types of tactile receptors?

Types of Tactile Receptors. First of all, the skin is composed of layers. The epidermis is the skin’s outer layer. It provides a protective barrier for the dermis. The dermis is a thick layer of tissue below the epidermis that forms the “true skin”. It contains blood, capillaries, nerves, sweat glands, and hair follicles.

Where are the sensory receptors located?

Meissner’s Corpuscle – These sensory receptors are located nearest to the skin’s surface. When these corpuscles are deformed by pressure, they send neural signals to the brain. These receptors perceive fine touch, pressure, and vibrations. Merkel’s Disk – These receptors are nerve endings located at the bottom of the epidermis and in hair follicles.

The Main Functions of The Tactile Sensor

The Development History of Tactile Sensor

Classification of Tactile Sensor

• Tactile sensors are extremely important in the technological research of robot sensing capabilities. Tactile sensor research is divided into broad and narrow senses. The broad sense of tactiles includes touch, pressure, force, slip, heat and cold, etc. The narrow sense of tactiles includes the force sensation on the contact surface of the robot and...

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Applications of Tactile Sensor