Smartphone-based portable intensity modulated force sensor

This work proposes a low-cost force sensor, based on intensity modulation in an optical fibre. The transducer element is composed of a knot in a single mode fibre embedded to a silicone adhesive cuboid, and can be easily fabricated. A simple sensing scheme is devised by using a visible light source and a CCD camera of a smartphone, allowing implementation costs to be reduced. Experimental results have shown that the sensor presents a linear response and a standard uncertainty of 1:07N within the dynamical range from 0 to 30 N.