SENSORS

Tactile and force sensors

1. Wrist Sensor
Senses the forces and moments experienced by the
robot hand in its interaction with its environment.
The sensor is usually installed at the robot wrist, just
prior to the gripped object whose maximal six d.o.f.
would require a measure of forces and moments
needed to fully sustain such a motion.

2. Tactile sensors
These are based on pressure sensitivity of a conductive
elastomer and are placed at the contact surface
usually on the fingers of the robot and the end effector.
We take tactile sensing to provide a measure of the
amount of contact pressure that is being exerted.

Wrist Sensor

A collection of beams is oriented in such a way that

their bending in a rigid frame may be used to deduce
force and moment information.
Forces and moments cannot be measure directly. One
way is through compensation, by using an apparatus
to match an unknown force, such as weighting of an
object on scale. Another method is deduction of force
as a result of deformation of some transducer that is
in contact with the force producing element.
The measurement of dynamic force is not considered.
The standard transducer is the strain gauge.

cantilevered beam with a rectangular cross-section is

The
loaded
by an unknown force.

The internal moment at O is

The corresponding axial stress is

 And the corresponding axial strain

A potentiometric circuit is used to obtain the voltage

readout.
The equation for the desired relation between the strain
and the voltage change is

Therefore the relation for force comes out to be

If two strain gauges are wired in series

and a voltage of 5 volts is
applied(figure c). The output is then
given by

Hence,

Maltese Cross

The sensor is machined from a single piece of aluminum.

Measurements are obtained from the pair of strain gauges
mounted on the four sides of each of the four spokes.

pair of stain gauges(eight in total) is connected to

Each
potentiometric
circuit. We may assume that the
deformations are uncoupled and the output voltages vi are
proportional to the corresponding forces wi at the ends of
the spokes. These are related to the orthogonal forces and
moments via matrix equation

F=Rw
Where and

And R a 6 X 8 matrix is called the resolved force matrix

R=[rij]

Tactile Sensor
Tactile sensors are constructed as array of load cells termed
taxels. They may also consist of continuous pressure sensitive
films from which the pressure information could be extracted.
Such sensors are an attempt to mimic a human sense of touch,
particularly in connection with the human finger. To achieve
such attributes following are the requirements:
A spacial resolution of 1-2mm. This amount to about 16 taxels/cm 2.
Sensitivity of individual load cell about 0.01N/m 2 with an upper limit of
10N/m2, corresponding to a dynamic range of 1000:1 with preferably
logarithmic characteristics.
Nonlinear behavior is acceptable, hysteresis is not acceptable, good
repeatability is extremely desirable.
Sensor should be robust.
Each sensor should have a response time ranging from 1-10ms.

 Either active or passive sensor can be chosen. Active

sensor will attain its energy from deformation, the
passive would require a separate energy source. The
former thus measures change almost exclusively the
latter is also capable of measuring static phenomena.
Most sensing cells use a deformation transducer with
corresponding measurable changes in resistance.
One of the means of constructing a load cell or a taxel
is the use of a capacitor. The capacitive sensor is 20
times more sensitive than the piezoresistive sensors.

The figure shows the basic

capacitive cell structure. A
dielectric of thickness d is
sandwiched between two
electrodes all with cross sectional
area A. The dielectric has modulus
E and permittivity .
The compression u of a bar of
length d in terms of P(force) is

The thickness of the dielectric is

with
Yielding

 The simplest way to measure capacitance C1 is

with a timer circuit involving 555 timer as shown
in figure.

 The output of the timer is a square wave with

and
Resulting in the frequency

The standard linear frequency to voltage converter is

governed by

So

 One way of providing semblance of an elastic skin is

with conductive elastomers. The change in resistance
can be used to measure pressure.

The sensor consist of

three layers and circuitry
(a protective covering,
a sheet of conductive
elastomer, and a printed
circuit board, plus the
data acquisition circuitry.

The Taxel
Array

 The printed circuit board consist of two rows of two

bulls-eyes, each with conductive inner and outer rings.
These comprise the taxels of the sensor. The outer
rings of each column are connected together and to
column-select transistor switch T. The center rings of
each bullseye are connected to diodes D.
Once a column has been selected a 5V source
provides current which first flows through a fixed 1k
resistance and through the diode to inner ring
connection at the cathode of the diode. The current
then continues through the elastomer to the outer ring
and thence through the transistor to the ground.

Acquisition Circuit

 No matter which column is chosen, the corresponding

activated circuit has the form as shown in figure
below.

(a) Section of column 1

(b) The general circuit

 Each separate branch is a separate voltage divider

where the dark segments denote the side view of the

printed circuit rings.
Variable resistances are to be measured and we finally
obtain
Where Vij is the voltage output from the particular
selected voltage divider.
Once the resistances has been calculated the can be
converted to pressure by making use of the
conduction curve given for the elastomer.

Conduction Curve for the elastomer