Force Sensing Fingertip with Soft Optical Waveguides for Robotic Hands and Grippers

Abstract

Rigid robots are required to interact with environments including objects that are sometimes delicate and sensitive due to their soft structures or easy tear. For robotic grasping tasks, hands and grippers are usually employed with soft fingertips in order to achieve the improvement of grasping adaptability and contact safety. Force sensing fingertip fabricated using soft optical waveguides is for the first time introduced to measure both contact force and position directly from the skin of fingertip. In addition, its fabrication process and techniques are presented in detail, and finally experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed fingertip with force sensing capability.