Sea urchin-inspired rigid-soft hybrid tactile sensor with wide linear range, fast response speed, and excellent robustness

Wide linear range and fast response of tactile sensors are crucial for simplifying signal conversion and enhancing real-time perception. However, traditional tactile sensors struggle to control force-electric response and viscoelastic hysteresis, limiting linear range and response speed. Inspired by the motion of the sea urchin tooth plate, this study proposes a tooth plate flexible tactile sensor (TPFTS), which integrates a bio-inspired elastomeric structure with conductive foam to achieve stress–strain tunability. The sensor achieves linear regulation of force-electric response, with a wide liner range (80-606 kPa with R2 = 0.988), fast response and recovery time (29/24 ms), and excellent stability (over 20000 cycles). Additionally, TPFTS maintains stable signal output even with severe physical damage (signal stability >95% with 8% volume loss). With superior performance, TPFTS has been applied in multi-degree-of-freedom force sensing, omnidirectional motion control, and wearable sensing, demonstrating its potential in health monitoring and human-machine interaction.