TY - GEN
T1 - Towards scalable soft e-skin
T2 - 8th IEEE RAS/EMBS International Conference for Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics, BioRob 2020
AU - Slepyan, Ariel
AU - Thakor, Nitish
N1 - Funding Information:
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would like to thank Dr. Anoop Patil for his continuous support and insight throughout the development of the project. We would also like to thank Mark Iskarous for his guidance and comments during the editing of this paper. This research was supported by an NSF award 1830444 COLLAB: Scalable, Customizable Sensory Solutions for Dexterous Robotic Hands. REFERENCES
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 IEEE.
PY - 2020/11
Y1 - 2020/11
N2 - Scalable, high-density electronic skins (e-skins) are a desirable goal of tactile sensing. However, a realization of this goal has been elusive due to the trade-off between spatial and temporal resolution that current tactile sensors suffer from. Additionally, as tactile sensing grids become large, wiring becomes unmanageable, and there is a need for a wireless approach. In this work, a scalable, event-based, passive tactile sensing system is proposed that is based on radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology. An RFID-based tactile sensing hand is developed with 19 pressure sensing taxels. The taxels are read wirelessly using a single 'hand-shaped' RFID antenna. Each RFID tag is transformed into a pressure sensor by disconnecting the RFID chip from its antenna and embedding the chip and antenna into soft elastomer with an air gap introduced between the RFID chip and its antenna. When a pressure event occurs, the RFID chip contacts its antenna and receives power and communicates with the RFID reader. Thus, the sensor is transformed into a biomimetic event-based sensor, whose response is activated only when used. Further, this work demonstrates the feasibility of constructing event-based, passive sensing grids that can be read wirelessly. Future tactile sensing e-skins can utilize this approach to become scalable and dense, while retaining high temporal resolution. Moreover, this approach can be applied beyond tactile sensing, for the development of scalable and high-density sensors of any modality.
AB - Scalable, high-density electronic skins (e-skins) are a desirable goal of tactile sensing. However, a realization of this goal has been elusive due to the trade-off between spatial and temporal resolution that current tactile sensors suffer from. Additionally, as tactile sensing grids become large, wiring becomes unmanageable, and there is a need for a wireless approach. In this work, a scalable, event-based, passive tactile sensing system is proposed that is based on radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology. An RFID-based tactile sensing hand is developed with 19 pressure sensing taxels. The taxels are read wirelessly using a single 'hand-shaped' RFID antenna. Each RFID tag is transformed into a pressure sensor by disconnecting the RFID chip from its antenna and embedding the chip and antenna into soft elastomer with an air gap introduced between the RFID chip and its antenna. When a pressure event occurs, the RFID chip contacts its antenna and receives power and communicates with the RFID reader. Thus, the sensor is transformed into a biomimetic event-based sensor, whose response is activated only when used. Further, this work demonstrates the feasibility of constructing event-based, passive sensing grids that can be read wirelessly. Future tactile sensing e-skins can utilize this approach to become scalable and dense, while retaining high temporal resolution. Moreover, this approach can be applied beyond tactile sensing, for the development of scalable and high-density sensors of any modality.
KW - e-skin
KW - event-based
KW - high-density
KW - passive
KW - tactile sensing
KW - wireless
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U2 - 10.1109/BioRob49111.2020.9224353
DO - 10.1109/BioRob49111.2020.9224353
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85095573629
T3 - Proceedings of the IEEE RAS and EMBS International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics
SP - 334
EP - 339
BT - 2020 8th IEEE RAS/EMBS International Conference for Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics, BioRob 2020
PB - IEEE Computer Society
Y2 - 29 November 2020 through 1 December 2020
ER -