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The development of a flexible 8x8 temperature and tactile sensing array, which will serve as the artificial skin for robot applications, is presented in this work. Pressure conductive rubber is employed as the tactile sensing material, and discrete temperature sensor chips are employed as the temperature sensing cells. Small disks of pressure conductive rubber are bonded on pre-defined interdigital copper electrode pairs which are patterned on a flexible copper-PI substrate which is fabricated by micromachining techniques. This approach can effectively reduce the crosstalk between each tactile sensing element. The mechanical and electrical properties of tactile sensing elements are measured. Also, scanning circuits are designed and implemented. The temperature and tactile sensing elements are heterogeneously integrated on the flexible substrate. By using the integrated 8x8 sensing arrays, temperature and tactile images induced by the heaters/stamps of different shapes have been successfully measured. Radio-frequency (RF) wireless modules are also developed and integrated on the skin system.

A study on the dynamics characteristics of a snap-action bistable microactuator that employs bimorph heating and residual-stress tension for switching behavior is presented. This study helps to characterize the device more completely and also provides valuable insights into the dynamic behavior of devices in micro-scale. The relation of bending moment and deflection during switching is numerically simulated by applying a simplified snap-through model. The model also takes air drag into consideration. The analysis shows that the switching time from one stable position to the other is less than 1 microsecond(s) , which is one thousand times shorter than the required cooling after each actuation. Hence, for the reported bistable microactuators that have overall lengths of about 200 micrometers and operate in air the maximum switching cycle time is expected to be in the kHz range that is based on thermal characteristics of the device.© (1995) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.