Development of Permanent Magnet Elastomer-based Tactile Sensor with Adjustable Compliance and Sensitivity

Tactile sensors are crucial in robotics as they enable robots to perceive and interact with their environment through touch, akin to the human sense of touch. Adjustable sensors that can adapt to various tasks by functional or structural modification have not been extensively explored. In terms of sensing adjustability of a sensor, two important aspects are the sensor’s sensitivity and compliance. This paper proposes a novel design for an adjustable compliance and sensitivity sensor composed of a silicone base, a permanent magnet elastomer (PME), and a printed circuit board (PCB) with magnetic transducers installed. Its adjustability is achieved by varying the pneumatic pressure. This paper presents the design, manufacturing process, and experimental characterization of such an adjustable compliance and sensitivity sensor. This paper thoroughly investigates how altering the pressure of the sensor influences its sensing properties. The results show that it can achieve adjustability in all three axes. For the current design, the sensitivity can be varied from 0.093 to 0.125 mT/N (34.41%), 0.089 to 0.13 mT/N (31.54%), and 0.169 to 0.45 mT/N (62.44%) in the X-, Y-, and Z-axis, respectively. The deformation it undertakes varies from 3.20 to 3.79 mm (18.44%), indicating the compliance change.