多機能フレキシブル電子皮膚を集積したソフトロボット

抄録

For comfortable and convenient human life, human-interactive and communicative robot has attractive attention from industrial to home-use applications. One of human-friendly robotic structures is pneumatic balloon type soft robots using mainly PDMS operated by compressed air. However, sensor integration to detect contact force and surface temperature has yet to be demonstrated without sacrificing softness and flexibility. This study demonstrates PDMS-based pneumatic balloon actuator integrated with electronic skin (e-skin) to detect tactile pressure and temperature like a human skin. The important advance of this demonstration is to integrate flexible sensors embedded in PDMS films. As a proof-of-concept, contact force and surface temperature of human skin were monitored by moving the PDMS-based robotic finger actuated by air pressure. This development is an important step for the future robotic application as human-interactive electronics.