Fabrication and testing of a filmy “feelingless” stretchable strain sensor

Development of stretchable sensors has recently attracted significant attention in the field of robotics. It is promising to design an “invisible” and “feelingless” sensor with stretchable capability. This paper presents a new method to fabricate a wearable stretchable sensor, which is relatively simpler than the existing manufacturing methods. The developed sensor has a sandwich structure consisting of two elastomer layers and one soft electrode layer in-between. By applying the new manufacturing method, the whole thickness of the stretchable sensor can be controlled to be less than 0.5mm. Carbon grease is employed as the resistance electrode and copper-tin fabric works as the wires. Due to the soft and stretchable nature, the developed sensor is effective in detecting motions of body joints. For verification, a stretchable skin-like glove with multiple sensors is fabricated as a palm-like measurement system to capture the motions of five fingers simultaneously. Experiments are performed to validate the performance of a single sensor and the integrated soft glove.