The working principle of resistive tactile sensor cells

Tactile sensors systems are very important for today's service robotics. Designed as a holohedral cover for a robot, they are suitable for collision detection when working in unstructured environments, for human-machine interaction or, with a high resolution, as object sensors enabling dexterous hands for reactive gripping. In this paper, we explain construction and working principle of resistive tactile sensor cells. The latter is based on the change of the electrical resistance between a conductive polymer and at least two electrodes. For this effect, we formulate a model to describe the dependence between the sensor's electrical resistance and the applied load. The model enables further improvements of resistive tactile sensor cells.