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Recent Development of Flexible Tactile Sensors and Their Applications
Trong-Danh Nguyen1, Jun Seop Lee1
1Department of Materials Science and Engineering, College of Engineering, Gachon University, Seongnam 13120, Korea.
Sensors (Basel, Switzerland)
|January 11, 2022
Summary
Flexible tactile sensors offer solutions for wearable health monitoring and AI applications by overcoming the limitations of traditional large, rigid systems. These small, skin-applied sensors accurately capture diverse motion signals for advanced human-computer interaction.
Area of Science:
- Materials Science and Engineering
- Biomedical Engineering
- Artificial Intelligence
Background:
- Wearable sensors are crucial for motion-based healthcare and artificial applications.
- Existing wearable sensors face limitations due to large size and non-flexible systems, hindering real-world application.
- Flexible, small-sized sensors are being developed to address these challenges by utilizing body motion as a stimulus.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review different types of tactile sensors and their working mechanisms.
- To present the applications of tactile sensors in motion sensing and healthcare monitoring.
- To highlight the recent contributions of tactile sensors in artificial intelligence and suggest future applications.
Main Methods:
- Review of existing literature on tactile sensor technologies.
- Analysis of working mechanisms including piezoresistive, piezocapacitive, piezoelectric, and triboelectric principles.
- Compilation of current and potential applications in health monitoring, motion sensing, and AI.
Main Results:
- Tactile sensors, applied directly to the skin, provide input signals for flexible reading devices.
- Four primary working mechanisms (piezoresistive, piezocapacitive, piezoelectric, triboelectric) are detailed.
- Significant applications in motion sensing, healthcare, and artificial intelligence have been identified.
Conclusions:
- Flexible tactile sensors are a promising technology for overcoming limitations of conventional wearable devices.
- These sensors enable accurate and diverse signal collection for advanced health monitoring and AI integration.
- Future research directions include expanding applications in human behavior studies and other emerging fields.
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