Investigation of Slip Sensing Technology Based on the Conductive Sponge‐PVDF

Abstract Tactile sensation is one of the most important senses in living things and smart devices to obtain the required data from the outside world, and slip is one of the main tactile information. In the present study, a slip sensor made of conductive sponge and polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) is proposed to sense the magnitude and direction of the sliding force. The structure and working principle of the sensor are analyzed using the finite element method. Compared with the conventional room temperature vulcanized (RTV) silicone rubber and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrates, the conductive sponge not only provides good support for PVDF film and increases its output voltage but also can be used as an electrode to transfer electric charges. The performed experiments show that the response time of the tactile unit using the conductive sponge substrate is 48 ms, and the detection range of the tactile unit is 0.1–15 N. It is found that the designed sensor has a response time of 80 ms, a recovery time of 160 ms, and a measurement error of the angle perception is 4.54° ± 1.53°. Moreover, its detection error for shear force is 8.04% ± 5.8%. Accordingly, this method can be effectively applied to distinguish the magnitude and direction of the shear force and detect the object sliding in real‐time.