Development of a scale-up version of stretchable sensor for robotic application

Abstract

This report provides an account on the Final Year Project (FYP) that was carried from January 2012 to December 2012. A Type B project, this Industrial Sponsored Project (ISP) is a joint project between Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and ASORO (A*STAR Social Robotic Lab of the Human Language Technology Department) of the Institute for Infocomm Research. The course of completion of the project was done both at NTU Information System Research Lab and ASORO (A*STAR Social Robotic Lab of the Human Language Technology Department) of the Institute for Infocomm Research. The time that was spent between NTU and ASORO in order to complete the project had been approximately equal. Since the materials used for the prototype are portable, with the approval given by the industrial company, the construction of the hardware and the initial part of the software programming needed had been done in either the NTU Information System Research Lab or at home. Therefore, this report summarizes and documents the detailed process that leads to the completion of the project.

Based on the scope of the main project, this paper introduces an experimental approach of achieving a highly conformable to customizable three-dimensional (3D) shapes and scalable Sensor Skin for robotic applications. This creates a greater flexibility in applications and opens more possibilities to thin the social barrier between human robot interactions. A sensor skin system prototype using conductive thread and a piece of conductive, flexible fabric is developed and tested to detect the basic modality of the tactile sensory system; touch, using the 1018 Phidget InterfaceKit and a GUI visual program to provide a visual representation of the output obtained. In detectin g a contact or a touch, other modalities such as the amount of pressure applied, the temperature, the hardness, etc can be obtained from the output voltage or current of the touch resulting from the touch.