ABSTRACT
One challenging issue with soft robots is developing soft sensors that can measure non-contact information such as the distance between a robot and potential obstacles. Especially in the case of a soft robot hand, the position of the grasping candidate must be measured without touching it. We adopted a conductive cloth, which allows deformation, to measure the distance between the cloth and the grasping candidate. This section introduces the fruits of our research in which the soft robot fingers embedded with the conductive cloth estimated the position of a grasping candidate without touching it. We first measured the relationship between the capacitance of cloth and the distance between the cloth and the conductive or non-conductive objects to investigate the possibilities of non-contact measurement. Our experimental results showed that the capacitance was changed by the conductive object at short distances. To observe the accuracy to estimate the position of the grasping candidate’s position, two plate-shaped sensors were set, and the conductive object’s position was estimated from the variation of the individual capacitance. We developed a soft robot hand with two soft fingers, embedded cloth in its fingertips, and measured the estimation accuracy. We also calculated the position estimation of various materials.
