Artificial Finger Skin having Ridges and Distributed Tactile Sensors used for Grasp Force Control

Abstract

An artificial elastic finger skin for robot fingers has been developed for controlling grasp force when weight and frictional coefficient of the grasped object are unknown. The elastic finger skin has ridges at the surface to divide the stick/slip area. It also has a pair of tactile sensors embedded per ridge similar to human fingertips. The surface of the whole finger is curved so that reaction force distributes. A Finite Element (FE) model of the elastic finger skin was made to conduct dynamic contact analysis using a FE method to design the elastic finger skin in detail. Then the elastic finger skin was made. We confirmed by calculation and experiment that incipient slippage of the ridge occurring near the edge of contact is detected. Then, grasp was controlled using the finger. Arbitrary objects were lifted by incipient slippage near the edge of contact. We found that artificial finger skin is useful for controlling grasping force when the weight and friction coefficient between the elastic finger skin and grasping object are unknown.