One sensor is an essential part of the machine parts, it led to the development of many machines. Recently, at Carnegie Mellon university, research and development is given telescopic optical sensor, the flexibility of robot and to the next level.
Carnegie Mellon university researchers have developed a with multiple 3 d printing optical fiber sensor and a new scalable optical sensor with three soft machine hand. The soft can detect less than one over ten of Newton's machine hand force. The project won the support of the NASA (NASA).
Use of optical fiber, the team in each robot finger placed 14 tension sensor, the design of robot fingers imitates the human finger bone structure. Each finger fingertips and two "finger" is 3 d printing, these a few root "finger" through the joints, joints also have a kind of silicone rubber "skin". This technology provides the machine finger determine its fingertips contact position and detect its of puny power ability. Despite the latest scalability optical sensing material but not in the current version of the mechanical hand, but the researchers hope in after the soft skin of the robot use it to get more feedback.
Objectively speaking, the current commonly used pressure or force sensor is problematic. This is because the wiring is too complex, sensor is easy to break. And they are very susceptible to interference from electric motors and other electromagnetic devices. While the use of fiber optic sensor, there is no these problems, and even a single fiber can contain several sensors. In this project, the robot fingers all sensors are connected to four optical fiber, and they are completely immune to electromagnetic interference.
, researchers say, their development is the purpose of this technology in order to improve the autonomy of the robot. "If you want to let the robot to work independently, and in the daily environment for all kinds of unexpected force safely to respond, you need to let the robot hands more than the current common level sensor installation." Carnegie Mellon university associate professor of robotics Yong - LaePark says, "only in the tip of the finger skin contains thousands of tactile senses unit, and a spider in each leg has hundreds of mechanical stimulation receptor. With the most advanced humanoid robots currently, such as NASA Robonaut, hand and wrist, only 42 sensor."
Park, the development of the machine hand got mechanical engineering students LeoJiang KevinLow and help. The device integrates the current for sale on the market of fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor, the sensor by measuring the emission wavelength displacement within the optical fiber to test strain. The finger is bent by an initiative of the tendon, but also by another passive straighten your fingers instead of the tendon of elasticity force.
New scalable optical sensor is a development team hope to be able to use the next version of the mechanical sensors of the hand. Because of the traditional optical sensor inelastic, as is known to all, the glass fiber almost impossible to stretch, and even made of polymer optical fiber tensile rate is only 20% to 25%, its use value is limited. However, by a reflective gold with the silicone rubber (reflectivegold) together, the researchers found that when the sensor is pressure, there will be light can escape, this makes them to the size of the measuring force. Park believes that this type of sensor can be sensed at the same time contact, and the size of the measuring force.
