Tactile Net?

What's the best way to construct a large scale tactile net for a robot's outer skin? The best thing I've been able to find so far is conductive rubber, but even that requires significant modification. Any ideas?

Reply to
Chris S.
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This is a tantalizing glimpse; do tell what you're up to!

Look into electronic drums for potential solutions, a few use a resistive rubber of some kind. Most use a piezo disk as a sensor.

Mostly analog solution:

A piezo disk mounted to a flexible lattice, which in turn is embedded in vinyl foam (or similar) might do just the trick. Add a couple more piezo sensors on the same lattice and you could triangulate any surface contact. Electronic drums do a similar thing to detect different "zones" (pad and rim shot to be exact) they do a differences function to see which sensor had the greatest impact then cut the output of the NON hit zone, so it doesn't sound, anyway I digress.

The key to above is that the piezo's must have a solid coupling with the lattice, as this extends there effective base size, thereby making them sensitive over a larger area. I suppose it wouldn't need to be a lattice structure, any semi rigid material would work, but I was imagining something more flexible.

Seems to me, you need to have one sensor for every 12" x 12" chunk of skin. If you make several "zones" you'll need to do the same sort of thing that the e-drums do to avoid cross talk between sensors. If the sensors are physically linked, you will need to do solve the crosstalk problem with electronics and/or logic.

Hey, is there a market for such a product? Maybe I should make some up and sell it here?

Reply to
danscott

Did some more looking into piezo stuff.. found a company that sells piezo film strips with leads for cheap..

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Not usefull in the solution below, but some tweaking of the idea, piezo films might be a better solution..

Reply to
danscott

That's an interesting idea. The nature of the piezo sensor would make it ideal for simply gluing it to the inside of a shell. Unfortunately, to cover any given area, you'd need Length*Width number of sensors. Granted, that's still somewhat acceptable at those prices, but the wiring would be a nightmare.

My > Did some more looking into piezo stuff.. found a company that sells piezo

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Reply to
Chris S.

Thanks for the interesting tangent you put me on! Iv had a lot of mind fun thinking about this problem.

I see the merit in a x,y matrix, you might find a way to do something similar to the resistive film used in touch screens. These only use 4 connections points and based on the relative resistance between the four can figure out the x,y location.

Playing with this idea. makes me want to try something like this.

I assume that the conductive rubber has some measurable resistance over distance, i.e. a 1 inch piece has less electric resistance than a 2 inch piece. This property is analogous to the resistive film used in touch screens. Now let's take a square sheet of conductive rubber, and place it over a sheet of some flexible conductor (will metallized Mylar balloons work?) the two can't touch (until you want them to) so you'll need to figure out a spacing method. (Maybe a thin plastic mesh between the two layers)

Anyway we will call the bottom conductor the anode and the top sheet of rubber the electrode. The middle piece, non-conductive we will call the "spacer." Now if we simply connect a lead somewhere on the perimeter of the electrode(the rubber sheet) and another lead to the anode (the bottom conductor) we would have a simple normally open switch that when closed, should have increased resistance as you get further away from the electrode connection point. Clear? Now, if we add a second lead to the electrode on a different axis to the first we should be able to measure resistance between that electrode contact and the anode too! Do you see it? You now have increased resistance as you get further away from electrode connection A and a different resistance value as you get further away from electrode connection B! Make A your "x" and "B" your "y" and you effectively have the coordinates of contact with only three wires! Of course you'll need to figure out how to convert these resistance values into real locations on the skin, but that should be pretty trivial. (famous last words!)

Regarding the piezo disk method.

I somewhat disagree to needing very many piezo disks for a largish area. Piezo disks are very sensitive. Seems to me, if you have a 3 or 4 foot square surface, and have three piezos attached and disperse locations, you should then be able to use some math to triangulate impact points anywhere on the surface. The same impact would arrive at different times and strengths to each sensor.

But, better yet, my continued research (thank you internet!) has led me to conclude that the best skin sensor would be made using Metallized Piezo Film. It has many wonderful attributes that would be useful for robot skin. See

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This site has some interesting info, particularly interesting is the method they have of creating custom etchings on full metallized sheets using a 9v battery and dull scalpel to vaporized the metallized layers this allows for complete custom etching.

Thanks

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Reply to
danscott

Restive rubber supplier! Ah how bout this stuff.. they even have a liguid form for casting custom skin! Dont need to build your own layered thing like I sugested above...

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Thanks

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Reply to
danscott

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Reply to
Chris S.

I thought the same thing just a little while ago...weird..

regarding the conductive rubber method. I can see how a single point detection is a problem. What if you had two contact points for each axis, one on either end of the axis. This should give you a "square" of contact..

Picture a square, with connections on the perimeter. The connections are on the center line of each axis. I.e. contacts on the top middle, right middle, bottom middle and left middle.

if you place your whole hand any where on the surface you will create a "bounding box" that is as long as your hand and as wide as your hand, though the shape of your hand will be lost. This is even more like the resistive film in touch screens method.

Ok, we've talked abstract.. why on earth do you need robot skin? Inquiring minds want to know! lol Thanks

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Reply to
danscott

Not sure I'm following your description... It just seems like sensing a huge block of contact would be just as useless as a single point, without any gradiant in between.

Just tired of lame skinless robots. Isn't everyone?

Reply to
Chris S.

I think you followed fine.. My design presuposes a singel touch event... if you want to track multiple touches at the same time then you will need some sort of switch at every location (logic, infered, contacts or otherwise) I supose it realy depends on what you expect the skin to do.

Id want my skin to tell my micro where and how hard it was touched. Just like a touch mouse, But YMMV.

Heck, my robots are still just modifed RC toys. So Im not even thinking about skin (other than as this thought experiment)

Reply to
danscott

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