Abstract
In recent years, robots which have flexible tactile sensors to contact with a human and environment have been studied. However, these sensors face problems that the flexible material is unstable and the dead zone emerges by damage of interactions. On the other hands, a magnetic-type tactile sensor can cope with the problems by mechanically separating sensing elements from the contact layer. We propose a new magnetic-type tactile sensor which replaces the contact layer by magnetorheological elastomers. An advantage of this sensor over existing ones is that it does not need to include permanent magnets in the contact layer. This feature enables us to develop a whole-body tactile sensor since we do not need to consider the position of magnets and a curvature of the frame. This paper reports our prototype sensors and experiments to examine the reaction profile of the sensors.
