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A wide variety of tactile (touch) sensors exist today\ud for robotics and related applications. They make use of various\ud transduction methods, smart materials and engineered structures,\ud complex electronics, and sophisticated data processing.\ud While highly useful in themselves, effective utilization of tactile\ud sensors in robotics applications has been slow to come and largely\ud remains elusive today. This paper surveys the state of the art and\ud the research issues in this area, with the emphasis on effective\ud utilization of tactile sensors in robotic systems. One specific with\ud the use of tactile sensing in robotics is that the sensors have to be\ud spread along the robot body, the way the human skin is – thus\ud dictating varied 3-D spatio-temporal requirements, decentralized\ud and distributed control, and handling of multiple simultaneous\ud tactile contacts. Satisfying these requirements pose challenges\ud to making tactile sensor modality a reality. Overcoming these\ud challenges requires dealing with issues such as sensors placement,\ud electronic/mechanical hardware, methods to access and acquire\ud signals, automatic calibration techniques, and algorithms to\ud process and interpret sensing data in real time. We survey\ud this field from a system perspective, recognizing the fact that\ud the system performance tends to depend on how its various\ud components are put together. It is hoped that the survey will be\ud of use to practitioners designing tactile sensing hardware (wholebody\ud or large-patch sensor coverage), and to researchers working\ud on cognitive robotics involving tactile sensing

This work presents piezoelectric oxide semiconductor field effect transistor ͑POSFET͒ based touch sensing devices. These devices are fabricated by spin coating thin ͑ϳ2.5 m͒ piezoelectric polymer film directly on to the gate area of metal oxide semiconductor ͑MOS͒ transistor. The polymer film is processed in situ and challenging issues such as in situ poling of piezoelectric polymer film, without damaging or altering the characteristics of underlying MOS devices, are successfully dealt with. The POSFET device represents an integral "sensotronic" unit comprising of transducer and the transistor-thereby sensing as well as conditioning ͑and processing͒ the touch signal at "same site."

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This paper presents the research on tactile sensing\ud system on chip. The tactile sensing chips comprise of 5 5 array\ud of Piezoelectric Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor\ud (POSFET) devices and temperature sensors. The POSFET devices\ud are obtained by spin coating piezoelectric polymer, poly(vinylidene\ud fluoride-trifluoroethylene) (P(VDF-TrFE)), films directly on to the\ud gate area of Metal Oxide Semiconductor (MOS) transistors. The\ud tactile sensing chips are able to measure dynamic contact forces\ud and temperatures. The readout and the data acquisition system\ud to acquire the tactile signals are also presented. The chips have\ud been extensively tested over wide range of dynamic contact forces\ud and temperatures and the experimental results are presented.\ud The paper also reports the research on tactile sensing chips with\ud POSFET array and the integrated electronics