foamin: A Deformable Sensor for Multimodal Inputs Based on Conductive Foam with a Single Wire

Soft sensors made of deformable materials, that are capable of sensing touches or gestures, have attracted considerable attention for use in tangible interfaces or soft robotics. However, to achieve multimodal gesture detection with soft sensors, prior studies have combined multiple sensors or utilized complex configurations with multiple wires. To achieve multimodal gesture sensing with a simpler configuration, a novel soft sensor consisting of a conductive foam with a single wire, was proposed in this study. This sensor was named as foamin and utilizes an impedance measurement technique at multiple frequencies called foamin. Additionally, a surface-shielding method was designed for improving the detection performance of the sensor. Several patterns of foamin were implemented to investigate the detection accuracy and three application scenarios based on the sensor were proposed.