Abstract
Instead of functioning as part of a pointing device in computing, the optical mouse sensor is employed for non-contact tactile sensing in this study. The translation direction, the height and the category of an object surface can be sensed. It is an interesting idea to make an optical mouse sensor work in the manner of a human hand but in a non-contact way to “feel” the object surface. Based on the data table obtained from the experiments, the translation direction is calculated and the nonlinearity of the translation direction sensing is studied. It can be concluded that the resolution of an optical mouse sensor is direction-related. The feasibility of surface height measurement is analyzed and the optical mouse sensor can be used for crack detection on a plane surface. Height variation of 0.2mm can be detected. Besides, the feasibility of the optical mouse sensor for surface discrimination is proposed.
