TITLE:
Conducting Rubber Force Sensor: Transient Characteristics and Radiation Heating Effect
AUTHORS:
Masato Ohmukai, Yasushi Kami, Ken Ashida
KEYWORDS:
Conducting Rubber; Force Sensor; Electrode; Vacuum Deposition; Radiation Heating
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Sensor Technology,
Vol.3 No.3,
September
5,
2013
ABSTRACT: Compression force sensors are indispensable to tactile
sensors in humanoid robots. We are investigating the application of low-cost
electrically conducting rubber sheets to force sensors, of which the biggest
problem is its poor reproducibility. We have found that the deposition of
aluminum by a vacuum evaporation method shows such an excellent characteristic
that the sensor can be used in a wide range under 10.33 N/cm2. In
this article, we investigated time response of the sensors and also studied how
the radiation heating during the vacuum evaporation process for Al deposition
affected their sensing property. We found that the radiation heating induces deterioration
from the point of view of standard deviation of the output voltage of the
sensors at a transient region. We convince that a low-temperature Al deposition
method should be developed to form electrodes on the electrical conducting
rubber sensors.