Tactile sensor

[3] Tactile sensors appear in everyday life such as elevator buttons and lamps which dim or brighten by touching the base.

For example, these sensors have been used in the manufacturing of automobiles (brakes, clutches, door seals, gasket), battery lamination, bolted joints, fuel cells etc.

Tactile imaging closely mimics manual palpation, since the probe of the device with a pressure sensor array mounted on its face acts similar to human fingers during clinical examination, deforming soft tissue by the probe and detecting resulting changes in the pressure pattern.

[4][5][better source needed] Tactile sensors can complement visual systems by providing added information when the robot begins to grip an object.

Determining weight, texture, stiffness, center of mass, coefficient of friction, and thermal conductivity require object interaction and some sort of tactile sensing.

Examples of such sensors available to consumers include arrays built from conductive rubber,[8] lead zirconate titanate (PZT), polyvinylidene fluoride(PVDF), PVDF-TrFE,[9] FET,[10] and metallic capacitive sensing[11][12] elements.

A key exemplar is the Gelsight technology first developed at MIT which uses a camera behind an opaque gel layer to achieve high-resolution tactile feedback.

[1] Recently, a sophisticated tactile sensor has been made open-hardware, enabling enthusiasts and hobbyists to experiment with an otherwise expensive technology.

The SynTouch BioTac, [ 1 ] a multimodal tactile sensor modeled after the human fingertip
a high-density 3-axis tactile sensing in a thin, soft, durable package, with minimal wiring. Integrating uSkin on the Allegro hand provides it with the human sense of touch.
uSkin Sensor by XELA Robotics, a high-density 3-axis tactile sensor in a thin, soft, durable package, with minimal wiring
A PPS tactile sensor system (TactileHead) designed to quantify the pressure over a human head.
A PPS tactile sensor system (TactileHead [ 2 ] ) designed to quantify the pressure distribution over the face and head. Useful to optimise the ergonomic design of headgear and eyewear.