Development of a mixed signal LSI for tactile data processing

A tactile sensor which can cover the entire body of a robot is needed to construct a robot that coexists with humans. In this study, pressure conductive rubber and a matrix of electrodes are used to build a two-dimensional force sensor array. The large amount of wiring causes problems in these sensor arrays. We are trying to develop an LSI which can detect the force distribution on the sensor and compress it to reduce the number of wires. The goal of this study is to detect signals from a 64 /spl times/ 64 sensor array and convert it into an 8-bit digital signal at 1-ms intervals. In this work, the detection circuit in particular is discussed.