Distributed Micropneumatic Sensors for Soft Robots to Detect Touch and Pose

Abstract

Soft robots benefit from their compliant materials, but the potential of safe and reliable operation remains limited without integration of strain and tactile sensors to detect contact, collisions, and robot pose. While humans achieve dexterous grasping through a dense distribution of mechanoreceptors in their hands, soft robotic grippers likewise need touch and pose sensing. Soft grippers often use pneumatic actuators, but integrating electrical or optical sensors to such actuators complicates their fabrication. Recently, we have reported a novel class of stretchable sensors, where the tactile pressure or strain measurement is based on measuring changes in airflow resistance caused by the deformation of a soft microchannel. These sensors are fabricated using identical techniques and materials as soft pneumatic actuators. In this work, we present a three‐fingered soft gripper with 18 distributed micropneumatic sensors. Each finger consists of a pneumatic actuator and six micropneumatic sensors. We demonstrate that multichannel micropneumatic sensing enables reliable detection of finger pose and object contact, supporting object recognition during grasping. Overall, the work provides a solution for integrating touch and pose sensing into soft robots without requiring additional fabrication methods or materials beyond those used for pneumatic actuators.