The Impact of the Electronic Skin Substrate on the Robotic Tactile Sensing

The tactile sensing is of significant interest for coexisting-cooperative-cognitive robots (Tri-Co robots). In order to improve the tactile sensing performance of the robot via an electronic skin (e-skin), an auxiliary elastomeric substrate is required. This paper investigates the effect of the substrate including elastic modulus, thickness and location on the static sensing at first. It is found that thick substrate with small elastic modulus can even the force distribution effectively and improve the contact area sensing. But it brought noises and crosstalk on the e-skin when the substrate has the large deformation. In occasions of dynamic tactile sensing, the impact of substrate thickness and elastic modulus was also studied and it is found that smaller elastic modulus can help e-skin sense larger and higher frequency stimulus.