A novel structural design for force/torque fingertip sensors

Abstract

This work presents a novel structural design of force/torque fingertip sensors for sensing planar forces. The resolution can be increased by reducing the condition number of the calibration matrix and the sensitivity can be enhanced by placing strain gauges at specified positions. Moreover, the interaction from off-axis loads is intrinsically negligible in our design. A relatively simple and accurate calibration method for performance evaluation is introduced. Some experimental results are presented to demonstrate the capability of the proposed design.