Sensory Perception & Interaction Research Group

Soft polymer tactile sensing arrays offer a customizable approach to capturing expressive gestural touch parameters over surfaces of differing shape and stiffness, e.g., in affective human-robot interaction. We present a flexible multi-taxel capacitive array that simultaneously measures 3-axis stress (normal and shear), a machine-learning modeling pipeline that characterizes a wide range of affective gestures, and data on feature importance. The current prototype features fast wireless communication and a 10 mm bending radius. We will demonstrate three variants tailored for manufacturing, healthcare, and robotics applications, and display the complexities and power of sensing shear in an array format.