A Flexible Compound Sensing System for Tactile Detection in Prosthetic Hands

Tactile perception feedback is very critical for grasp safety of prosthetic hands and realization of human-machine interaction. However, current tactile sensing methods are usually limited in practical applications due to either the structure or the material performance of sensors. In this work, we designed and fabricated a compound sensing system for tactile detection in prosthetic hands based on piezoelectret and force-sensing-resistor (FSR) sensors, where the piezoelectrets are highly sensitive to dynamic forces and the FSRs are stable for static forces. The results show that the proposed sensing system could simultaneously detect the normal pressure and tangential force on prosthetic hand surfaces. By improving the resolution of slipping signal with algorithm, the slipping signals could be recorded within 0.1 s. This preliminary work may provide a new approach for fabricate artificial skin of prosthetic hands.