Soft Pneumatic Sensing Chambers for Robotic Grasping

This work presents the concept and prototyping of a tactile sensing system to enhance robots' exteroception. The proposed solution comprises soft tactile sensing elements, which are 3D-printed as monolithic structures. With a geometry inspired by human fingertips, these elements can sense contact both on the fingertip pulp and on the distal free edge, and Force Sensitive Resistors are integrated under their surface. Thus, this system mimics the human sense of touch, providing localized and global information on contact, and it can adjust its stiffness to grasp objects of different nature. Finally, preliminary results showing the system capabilities are presented.