Dual-Modal Magnetic Skin for Robust Tactile Sensing

Abstract

Traditional magnetic tactile sensors are highly susceptible to external magnetic field interference, limiting their reliability in practical applications. To address this challenge, we propose a dual-modal soft magnetic skin capable of simultaneously acquiring magnetic and force tactile information across spatiotemporal domains, inspired by the sensory mechanisms of human skin. The system integrates a Convolutional Neural Network-Convolutional Neural Network-Multilayer Perceptron (CNN-CNN-MLP) architecture to fuse these dual-modal signals effectively. Furthermore, we introduce a novel Dynamic Weighting Coefficient Layer (DWCL) to dynamically optimize fusion weights for each modality based on real-time input characteristics, thereby enhancing robustness against magnetic interference. The DWCL leverages temporal discrepancies between modalities during pre-contact sensing and quantifies the magnetic field strength of target objects to autonomously adjust fusion ratios, prioritizing the more reliable modality under varying interference conditions. Extensive experimental evaluations demonstrate that the proposed DWCL significantly improves interference resistance compared to conventional fusion methods, advancing the feasibility of magnetic tactile sensing in real-world environments.