December 8, 2009
Optical Pressure Provides Robotic Skin A Humanly Touch
Historically, robots are made of iron and lots of electrical circuitry. There were attempts to make their metallic case, smoother but nothing natural to the human sense of touch. Nowadays, the metallic skin can be hidden with an artificial material that really looks natural. It's humanly appearance and gentleness would make one re-think, "Is this a robot".
Adding to dexterity, robotic hands and fingers are covered with an artificial optical skin. An artificial optical skin is a silicon surface material with multiple optical sensors mainly working on pressure to release power.
Researchers from Belgium, developed a flexible "skin" embedded with pressure or optical sensors. Waveguide sensors mainly rely on the change of coupling behavior between layers of crossing waveguides. The "skin" is composed of two polymer waveguides separated by a thin silicon strip. When pressure is exerted on the "skin", the distance between the waveguides decreases, in effect, light is transmitted from one waveguide to another.
waveguide sensor principle
Read the complete process description here.
This behavior produces power, that is seen as light in motion. As pressure increases, the amount light that leaks out between waveguides also increases, resulting to hardening of the skin. Thus the amount of light produced is dependent on the amount of pressure applied.
Click here to read more about Artificial Optical Skin, Waveguide Sensor and Silicon Waveguide.
Written by: John
Filed Under: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotics Sensors
Tags: Dexterity, Electrical Circuitry, Flexible Skin, Gentleness, Hands And Fingers, Human Sense Of Touch, Leaks, Metallic Case, Optical Sensors, Polymer Waveguides, Pressure Sensors, Principle, Process Description, Robot, Robotic Hands, Robots, Sense Of Touch, Silicon Strip, Silicon Surface, Surface Material
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Shawn McAbee
August 18, 2010 at 10:52 pm
Artificial Touch Sensitive Tissue
Back in the mid – nineties I was working on many different theories and they relied on the need of a robotics sense of its environment. I came up with many designs but this one I have always wanted to test.
I will forgo the reasons why I have not for now.
By whatever means; laser, chemical etching, nano tech, ect. You’ll create a simple coil pattern on the base metal. Smaller around the fingers, larger in lower response areas. A thin coating is used to separate the coils from the base metal, the coil ending to connect with the base.
Mix a ferromagnetic (none magnetized powder) to the skin compound. Using an electromagnetic field to spread them evenly and point them in one direction.
After curing magnetize the ferromagnetic material.
Two layers n to n or s to s is used and depending in the formula of the skin the outer layer should respond to temperature before the enter layer giving a response to temperature.
The small coils should pick up the difference when the alignment of the magnetic field is disrupted.