Capacitive Arrays for Robotic Sensing

Electromagnetic arrays have been used effectively for many years in optimizing the responses of antenna systems. The basic principles that make arrayed antennas work and make them easy to control can also be applied to near field electromagnetic array sensors. The array factor allows for flexibility in sensor geometry. Firstly, by exciting only a portion of an array in a sequential fashion one can physically scan and interrogate a region of a sample without having to move the sample or the probe head itself. Secondly, the field configurations can be altered by selectively exciting electrodes of an array. Also, the information received can be selected by combining electrodes to form different effective receiver geometries. Thirdly, array configurations allow for real-time analog signal processing. For instance, one can perform pattern matching by choosing the spatial resolution of the probe to match the spatial resolution of the desired feature.