title: A biomimetic tactile sensing system based on polyvinylidene fluoride film.
abstract: Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) film has been widely investigated as a sensing material due to its outstanding properties such as biocompatibility, high thermal stability, good chemical resistance, high piezo-, pyro- and ferro-electric properties. This paper reports on the design, test, and analysis of a biomimetic tactile sensor based on PVDF film. This sensor consists of a PVDF film with aluminum electrodes, a pair of insulating layers, and a "handprint" friction layer with a copper foil. It is designed for easy fabrication and high reliability in outputting signals. In bionics, the fingerprint of the glabrous skin plays an important role during object handling. Therefore, in order to enhance friction and to provide better manipulation, the ridges of the fingertips were introduced into the design of the proposed tactile sensor. And, a basic experimental study on the selection of the high sensitivity fingerprint type for the biomimetic sensor was performed. In addition, we proposed a texture distinguish experiment to verify the sensor sensitivity. The experiment's results show that the novel biomimetic sensor is effective in discriminating object surface characteristics. Furthermore, an efficient visual application program (LabVIEW) and a quantitative evaluation method were proposed for the verification of the biomimetic sensor. The proposed tactile sensor shows great potential for contact force and slip measurements.
authors.affiliation: College of Instrumentation and Electrical Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun 130061, China.
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Xin
authors.affiliation: College of Instrumentation and Electrical Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun 130061, China.
authors.forename: Hongying
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Tian
authors.affiliation: College of Instrumentation and Electrical Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun 130061, China.
authors.forename: Chao
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.affiliation: College of Instrumentation and Electrical Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun 130061, China.
authors.forename: Xiang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: College of Instrumentation and Electrical Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun 130061, China.
authors.forename: Hongshuai
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: College of Instrumentation and Electrical Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun 130061, China.
authors.forename: Peiyuan
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: College of Instrumentation and Electrical Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun 130061, China.
authors.forename: Chenghui
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Qian
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Functional Inorganic Material Chemistry, Ministry of Education, Heilongjiang University, Harbin 150080, China.
authors.forename: Shuhong
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Functional Inorganic Material Chemistry, Ministry of Education, Heilongjiang University, Harbin 150080, China.
authors.forename: Cheng
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D040761:Biomimetic Materials; D006801:Humans; D008567:Membranes, Artificial; D011145:Polyvinyls; D014110:Touch; D005465:Fluorocarbon Polymers
chemical_list: D008567:Membranes, Artificial; D011145:Polyvinyls; C024865:polyvinylidene fluoride; D005465:Fluorocarbon Polymers