Work

Sea urchin-inspired rigid-soft hybrid tactile sensor with wide linear range, fast response speed, and excellent robustness

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Wide linear range and fast response of tactile sensors are crucial for simplifying signal conversion and enhancing real-time perception. However, traditional tactile sensors struggle to control force-electric response and viscoelastic hysteresis, limiting linear range and response speed. Inspired by the motion of the sea urchin tooth plate, this study proposes a tooth plate flexible tactile sensor (TPFTS), which integrates a bio-inspired elastomeric structure with conductive foam to achieve stress–strain tunability. The sensor achieves linear regulation of force-electric response, with a wide liner range (80-606 kPa with R 2 = 0.988), fast response and recovery time (29/24 ms), and excellent stability (over 20000 cycles). Additionally, TPFTS maintains stable signal output even with severe physical damage (signal stability >95% with 8% volume loss). With superior performance, TPFTS has been applied in multi-degree-of-freedom force sensing, omnidirectional motion control, and wearable sensing, demonstrating its potential in health monitoring and human-machine interaction.

Source: npj Flexible Electronics

DOI: 10.1038/s41528-025-00513-5