Highly Stretchable and Sensitive Strain Sensor Based on Porous Materials and Rhombic‐Mesh Structures for Robot Teleoperation

Abstract

Wearable sensors for human motion capture offer a promising human–robot interface to control robots in the teleoperation scenario, where robots could function as the second body of human operators to fulfill tasks remotely and accurately. In this paper, a novel strain sensor based on a soft polyurethane (PU) sponge and carbon nanotubes (CNT) is designed for motion capture of human joints. The unique 3D porous microstructure of the PU‐CNT sponge provides the sensor with high sensitivity. To bridge the gap between the high sensitivity and high stretchability of the strain sensor, a rhombic‐mesh structure with optimized geometric parameters, in conjunction with a pre‐compression design, is proposed for strain sensor prototyping, which endows the sensor with an extra elongation rate during the stretching process. The proposed PU‐CNT strain sensor manifests promising sensing performance with a stretchability of up to 300% and a maximum gauge factor of 3893, together with long‐term durability, low detection limit, and fast response capacity. Finally, the validation of the strain sensor is carried out by deploying the sensor on a human elbow to realize the teleoperation of a robot arm, which could be monitored through the digital twin model of the robot in a real‐time manner.

Materials-Driven Soft Wearable Bioelectronics for Connected Healthcare

“…In addition to thin film-based soft electronics, 3D porous materials with intrinsically conductive backbones such as a neat conductive sponge and a conductive materials coated sponge have gained great attention . Recently the deformation-insensitive conductive Au foam was developed by growth v-AuNWs on a PU sponge (Figure f).…”

“…In addition to thin film-based soft electronics, 3D porous materials with intrinsically conductive backbones such as a neat conductive sponge and a conductive materials coated sponge have gained great attention. 270 Recently the deformationinsensitive conductive Au foam was developed by growth v-AuNWs on a PU sponge (Figure 9f). The as-fabricated Au sponge showed excellent tolerance to mechanical loads with negligible conductivity and impedance changes within 40% stretching, 80% compression, and 1080°twisting, which is promising for long-term, noninvasive monitoring of physiological processes.…”

A laser-engraved wearable gait recognition sensor system for exoskeleton robots

“…In the past decade, the development of flexible electronics has provided sensors with a lightweight and favorable comfort 6 – 10 . Various flexible sensors, such as pressure sensors, temperature sensors and humidity sensors, have been designed and demonstrated to track human physical activities 11 – 19 . However, flexible sensors usually suffer from batch-to-batch variations as a result of limited fabrication techniques and methods, which hinders their application in real-life systems.…”

An End-to-End Dynamic Posture Perception Method for Soft Actuators Based on Distributed Thin Flexible Porous Piezoresistive Sensors

“…In [19], researchers achieved soft robot posture sensing by utilizing a kirigami-inspired sensor and a deep learning calibration method, representing an innovative approach to the closed-loop control of soft robots. In the recent work of Ye et al [20], a significant breakthrough has been achieved in robotics by utilizing a kirigami-inspired porous sensor for robot teleoperation. In addition to their use in detecting robot postures, flexible sensing techniques have found extensive applications in other areas that require safe and comfortable human-robot interactions, such as the development of artificial skins [21,22] and the monitoring of human body conditions and motions [23][24][25].…”