Tactile texture recognition with a 3-axial force MEMS integrated artificial finger

Recently, several three-axial MEMS-based force sensors have been developed. This kind of force micro sensor is also called tactile sensor in literature for its similarities in size and sensitivity with human mechanoreceptors. Therefore, we believe these three-axial force sensors being able to analyse textures properties while sliding on a surface, as would do a person with his finger. In this paper, we present one of these sensors packaged as an artificial finger, with a hard structure for the bone and a soft rubber for the skin. Preliminary experiments show a good sensitivity of the finger, as its ability to sense the periodic structure of fabrics or to differentiate papers from fabrics calculating a friction coefficient. Its performance for discrimination of different surfaces is then estimated on fine textures of 10 kinds of paper. Supervised classification methods are tested on the data. They lead to an automatic classifier of the 10 papers showing good performances.