Simultaneous Motion and Force Sensing for a Flexure Finger
- Resource Type
- Conference
- Authors
- Guo, Jiajie; He, Xiaopan; Xiong, Caihua
- Source
- 2020 8th IEEE RAS/EMBS International Conference for Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob) Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob), 2020 8th IEEE RAS/EMBS International Conference for. :1061-1066 Nov, 2020
- Subject
- Bioengineering
Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems
Robotics and Control Systems
Signal Processing and Analysis
Shape
Force
Prototypes
Biomedical measurement
Robot sensing systems
Strain measurement
Sensors
- Language
- ISSN
- 2155-1782
Flexure graspers have been identified as a bioinspired evolution in robotics to adapt to unpredictable disturbances and uncertainties in unstructured environments. However, these soft robots with infinite degrees of freedom (DOFs) have brought in many technical challenges, among which is the sensing of spatially-distributed and time-varying force and displacement fields for feedback control with a finite number of nodal measurements. This paper proposes a simultaneous motion and force sensing method based on discrete strain data with an illustrative application to a flexure finger that can serve as an actuation and sensing unit in a robotic hand. The method is rigorously formulated by introducing the strain mode shapes and correlating continuous displacement and force/moment distributions with curvatures of deformation. Design analysis of the flexure robotic finger is presented and the compliant composite joints are fabricated via shape deposition with embedded strain gauges. The proposed sensing method is numerically verified with finite element analysis and experimentally validated on a prototype of the flexure finger.