Materials scientists and engineers from Tsinghua University have developed an electronic skin (e-skin) with dual tactile modalities. This innovation promises to enhance the sensory capabilities of robots and enable them to communicate tactile information to human users, thus facilitating two-way human-machine interaction based on touch.
This advance is detailed in a study recently accepted by the IEEE ICRA 2024 conference and published on the arXiv preprint server.
“Our paper presents a dual-mode electronic skin (e-skin) designed to improve human-computer interaction (HRI).“, Dr. Wenbo Ding, co-author of the paper, told Tech Xplore, who shared that this new type of “skin” is designed to overcome the limitations of current technologies of those that only offer tactile perception or tactile feedback, but not both.
Integrating the sensing and feedback mechanisms into a single device has been a challenge, resulting in larger and more expensive devices to produce.
Dual function electronic skin
The main objective of this study was to create an e-skin that not only detects tactile information, but also responds to contact forces, allowing bidirectional transmission of tactile information. The developed electronic skin combines multimodal magnetic tactile sensing with vibration feedback, integrating a flexible magnetic film, a silicon elastomer, a Hall sensor array, an actuator array and a microcontroller unit.
“The e-skin integrates a flexible magnetic film, a silicon elastomer, a Hall sensor array, an actuator array and a microcontroller unit,” Dr. Ding explained. “The Hall sensor detects the deformation of the magnetic film caused by mechanical pressure, which causes changes in the magnetic field, thus achieving a multidimensional tactile perception. At the same time, the actuator assembly generates mechanical vibration to provide tactile feedback, enhancing the human-robot interactive experience.“
The e-skin put to the test
Dr. Ding and his team tested a prototype of this new skin in a series of experiments, evaluating its potential in applications such as object recognition, precise weighing, and immersive human-robot interaction. The results demonstrated its effectiveness in both tactile information detection and tactile feedback generation.
“The weighing experiment is particularly innovative, as it employs tactile vibrations in unexpected and creative ways,” Dr. Ding said. “In addition, the speed of the delicate weighing process can be controlled and the control accuracy can be improved to (~0.0246 g), satisfying the daily requirements of industrial and kitchen weighing. The total cost of the device is less than $26 and it weighs less than 29 grams.“
The new dual-modality skin could soon be implemented in a variety of environments, enhancing robotic manipulation, enabling more precise control in industrial robots and opening new avenues for the development of advanced prosthetic limbs.
“Our future research and development will focus on miniaturizing the electronic skin components for a wider range of applications, incorporating new sensing modalities (e.g., temperature sensing) and adding auditory feedback“, Dr. Ding added. “These advances are aimed at providing a more complete sensory experience and improving human-machine collaboration.“.
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Source: techxplore.com
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