Review of Recent Bio-Inspired Design and Manufacturing of Whisker Tactile Sensors

Abstract

Whisker sensors are a class of tactile sensors that have recently attracted attention. Inspired by mammals’ whiskers known as mystacial vibrissae, they have displayed tremendous potential in a variety of applications e.g., robotics, underwater vehicles, minimally invasive surgeries, and leak detection. This paper provides a supplement to the recent tactile sensing techniques’ designs of whiskers that only sense at their base, as well as the materials employed, and manufacturing techniques. The article delves into the technical specifications of these sensors, such as the resolution, measurement range, sensitivity, durability, and recovery time, which determine their performance. The sensors’ sensitivity varies depending on the measured physical quantity; for example, the pressure sensors had an intermediate sensitivity of 58%/Pa and a response time of around 90 ms, whereas the force sensors that function based on piezoelectric effects exhibited good linearity in the measurements with a resolution of 3 µN and sensitivity of 0.1682 mV/µN. Some sensors were used to perform spatial mapping and the identification of the geometry and roughness of objects with a reported resolution of 25 nm. The durability and recovery time showed a wide range of values, with the maximum durability being 10,000 cycles and the shortest recovery time being 5 ms. Furthermore, the paper examines the fabrication of whiskers at the micro- and nanoscales, as well as their contributions to mechanical and thermal behavior. The commonly used manufacturing techniques of 3D printing, PDMS casting, and screen printing were used in addition to several micro and nanofabrication techniques such as photolithography, etching, and chemical vapor deposition. Lastly, the paper discusses the main potential applications of these sensors and potential research gaps in this field. In particular, the operation of whisker sensors under high temperatures or high pressure requires further investigation, as does the design of sensors to explore larger topologies.

Additive Manufacturing in Underwater Applications

“…Another group of sensors for underwater applications was inspired by phocid seal whiskers [103,104]. Their main task was to sense an upstream wake.…”

Perspective for soft robotics: the field’s past and future

“…Amoli et al classify bioinspired tactile sensors into three categories [54]: Nature-inspired structural designs, nature-inspired functional designs and advanced sensory systems. Nature inspired structural designs encompass systems based on whisker structures [55][56][57], interlocked structures [56,[58][59][60][61][62], Hierarchical structures [63][64][65]) as shown in figure 4 [66] and porous structures [67][68][69].…”

Deciphering the connection between upstream obstacles, wake structures, and root signals in seal whisker array sensing using interpretable neural networks

“…The remarkable sensing abilities of seal whiskers have sparked great interest and inspiration for applications in underwater navigation, object tracking, and object detection. Several biomimetic sensors has already been designed, fabricated and tested in the laboratories ( Beam et al, 2013 ; Kottapalli et al, 2015 ; Eberhardt et al, 2016 ; Sayegh et al, 2022 ; Wang et al, 2022 ; Zheng et al, 2022 ; Liu et al, 2023 ).…”