A NOVEL TACTILE SENSOR SYSTEM FOR HEAVY-LOAD APPLICATIONS BASED ON ANINTEGRATED CAPACITIVE PRESSURE SENSOR

We report on a tactile sensor system for heavy-load and heavy-duty app lications. The sensor system is based on a surface-micromachined capac itive pressure sensor. A new packaging technique is presented that ena bles applications where large forces and rough operation environments prevail. Due to the CMOS compatibility, an efficient way to address an d read out the sensor array can be realized. We present an application example that shows the enhanced versatility of heavy-load manipulator s when using tactile sensors for manipulation tasks. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.