A Novel Inverse Solution of Contact Force Based on a Sparse Tactile Sensor Array

High-density tactile sensing has been pursued for humanoid robotic hands to obtain contact force information while the elastomer skin cover is traditionally considered to impair the force discrimination. In this work, we try to utilize the diffusion effect of the elastomer cover to identify an arbitrary contact force load just based on a sparse tactile sensor array. By numerical analysis, we proved the monotonous relation between the Pearson’s correlation coefficient and the relative distance of two single-force loads. Then, we meshed the elastomer surface and conducted the calibration load process to establish the calibration database of the sensing outputs. Afterwards, we applied the correlation method to the database and the sensing output of the unknown load to determine its location and intensity. For validation tests of the proposed method, we designed and fabricated a 3 × 3 sparse tactile sensor array with flat elastomer cover and established an automatic three-axis loading system. The validation tests were implemented including 100 random points with force intensity ranging from 0.1 to 1 N. The test results show that the method has good accuracy of detecting force load with the mean location error of 0.46 mm and the mean intensity error of 0.043 N, which meets the basic requirements of tactile sensing. Therefore, it is feasible for the sparse tactile sensor array to realize high-density load detection.