A thermally flexible and multi-site tactile sensor for remote 3D dynamic sensing imaging

Abstract

A flexible, multi-site tactile and thermal sensor (MTTS) based on polyvinylidene fluoride (resolution 50 × 50) is reported. It can be used to implement spatial mapping caused by tactile and thermal events and record the two-dimensional motion trajectory of a tracked target object. The output voltage and current signal are recorded as a mapping by sensing the external pressure and thermal radiation stimulus, and the response distribution is dynamically observed on the three-dimensional interface. Through the mapping relationship between the established piezoelectric and pyroelectric signals, the piezoelectric component and the pyroelectric component are effectively extracted from the composite signals. The MTTS has a good sensitivity for tactile and thermal detection, and the electrodes have good synchronism. In addition, the signal interference is less than 9.5% and decreases as the pressure decreases after the distance between adjacent sites exceeds 200 µm. The integration of MTTS and signal processing units has potential applications in human-machine interaction systems, health status detection and smart assistive devices.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

tactile/thermal sensor / piezoelectric/pyroelectric effects / high resolution / spatial mapping / motion monitoring

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Shandong Science and Technology Development Plan (No. GG201809230040), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61573202 and 11847135).

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2020 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature