Fluid-based robot skin for contact detection and thermal stimulation

Abstract Robot skin is essential for achieving physical human-robot interaction. In particular, a warm feeling with a soft tactile impression is necessary for a human-friendly robot design. Contact sensing for safe interaction is also important; however, adding sensors to the skin surface can compromise its soft, smooth feel and create uncomfortable tactile sensations for humans. The paper proposes the design of a fluid-based soft robot skin that can simultaneously give thermal stimulation and detect human contact. We tested a prototype of the robotic skin, confirming that the fluid-based control successfully enabled both thermal display and contact detection capabilities.