Detecting Sliding Movement Location on Morphologically Changeable Soft Tactile Sensing System with Three-axis Accelerometer

This paper addresses the design, fabrication and preliminary experimental results of our newly developed morphologically changeable soft tactile sensing system aiming at detecting the location of a sliding movement. The proposed system consists of a silicon rubber base with a chamber and a thin silicone rubber skin covering the chamber. A three-axis accelerometer is embedded in the skin. By pressurizing the chamber, the skin inflates, changing its sensitivity to sliding movements on the surface of the skin. We fabricated a sensing system and conducted preliminary experiments to assess its ability. First, we measured the height of the inflated skin and by comparing it with the output of accelerometer, we confirmed that the skin height has a linear relationship with the output of the accelerometer. We then let the sensor system move so that an indenter slides on the surface of the skin. From the obtained data of the accelerometer, we concluded that we can judge the location of the sliding movement of the indenter and that the sensing system potentially has the ability to detect the direction of the movements.