A Sensitive Skin Using Wireless Tactile Sensing Elements

In order to realize a wide area of a soft sensor skin covering the entire body of robots, several ideas of wireless tactile elements have been presented[1][2]. But those papers described only the sensing chip designs, and no methods of their equipment on a real robot had been shown. In this paper we propose a 1-D film coil array to power wireless tactile sensor chips and obtain sensing signals from them. The film is attached on a robot bone first, and we cover it with a sensor skin containing wireless sensing elements. Since the skin can move on the bone freely, the skin does not prevent large motions of robot body. The tactile elements without wires bring a tough and elastic sensor skin. The design of the film coil array and results of wireless signal transmission using a new type of wireless sensing element are shown.