Human-Like Artificial Skin Sensor for Physical Human-Robot Interaction

Physical Human-Robot-Interaction (pHRI) is beneficial for communication in social interaction or to perform collaborative tasks but is also crucial for safety. While robotic devices embed sensors for this sole purpose, their design often is the results of a trade-off between technical capabilities and rarely considers human factors. We propose a novel approach to design and fabricate compliant Human-like artificial skin sensors for robots, with similar mechanical properties as human skin and capable of precisely detecting touch. Our artificial skin relies on the use of different silicone elastomers to replicate the human skin layers and comprises an embedded electrode matrix to perform mutual capacitance sensing. We present the sensor and describe its fabrication process which is scalable, low-cost and ensures flexibility, compliance and robustness. We introduce Muca, an open-source sensing development board and then evaluate the performance of the sensor.