ViaTac: A High-Resolution Piezoresistive Tactile Sensor Array with Conformal Contact Surface for Shape Reconstruction

Abstract

Tactile sensing is crucial for robots to achieve human-like manipulation capabilities and safe interaction with the environment. Existing piezoresistive tactile sensors often suffer from limited spatial resolution and poor conformability to contact objects due to their unstretchable contact surfaces. In this paper, we present a low-cost and easily fabricated piezoresistive tactile sensor array that utilizes flexible printed circuit (FPC) via as electrodes to achieve high spatial resolution (64cm<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">−2</sup>), while incorporating stretchable materials for surface encapsulation to enable conformal contact with objects. Unified material selection for both the sensing and encapsulation layers ensures robust performance. We characterized the sensing performance, mechanical durability, and uniformity of the sensor array and further demonstrated its practical applications in contact shape reconstruction.