新しいセンサ配置を取り入れた小型静電容量式6軸力センサの開発

抄録

Force sensing is a crucial task for robots, especially when the end effectors such as fingers and hands need to interact with an unknown environment. In order to sense such forces, a force/torque sensor is an essential component. Many available force/torque sensors are based on strain gauges, but other sensing principles are also possible. Capacitive sensors have the advantage of the availability of small sized chips for sensor readout and digitization. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a small-sized 6-axis force-torque sensor using a novel arrangement of 12 unit of the transducers based on the capacitive force transducer we have previously developed. The copper beryllium used in our sensor acts as a capacitive transducer. The transducer has a hard limit which makes the sensor robust to overload. Additionally, this sensor provides digital output via I2C bus to reduce the susceptibility to noise, and reduce the number of required wires.