Design of tactile sensor assembly and concentrated path of thermal sensing for bionic arm

This report is aimed to introduce the concept of a biomimetic skin-type tactile sensor assembly comparable to human skin through the engineering analysis of sensing mechanism in human skin and the development of various sensors mimicking mechanoreceptors in the human skin. For the application to bionic arm, a tactile sensor assembly is designed with seven kinds of sensors having 3D structures arrangement inside the different young's modulus multilayered blocks. Each sensor is under developing for the improved performance and the tactile sensor assembly is designed to present the function of each sensor with the maximum efficiency. Especially, the optimum design of thermal sensing is investigated to prevent the temperature difference between the contacted outmost layer and temperature sensor located in deep location due to the bad thermal conductivity of skin-like rubber (Ecoflex®). The suggested tactile sensor assembly will be guided the way of biomimetic E-skin to exhibit the functions of human skin.