Resistivity characteristics of single miniature tactile sensing element based on pressure sensitive conductive rubber sheet

This paper presents the development of a tactile sensor using single miniature sensing element based on pressure sensitive conductive rubber and outlines the resistance measurements performance. This sensor is specially designed for a robotic hand developed at UiTM Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. Nevertheless, the low cost, low density and flexible material is suitable for most robotics hand designs. It exhibits piezoresistive like behavior whose resistance change with force/pressure enables its applications as tactile sensor. The operating principle and hardware architecture of the sensor is explained. It consists of an array of 16 sensing elements in rows and columns for data acquisition. The test results indicate significant drop of resistance with the increase of applied load.