ELECTRONIC SKIN BASED ON TRIBOELECTRIFICATION AND ELECTROSTATIC INDUCTION

Massoud, M. A.; Ali, W. Y.; Badran, A. H.

doi:10.21608/jest.2023.298053

ELECTRONIC SKIN BASED ON TRIBOELECTRIFICATION AND ELECTROSTATIC INDUCTION

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Biomedical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Minia University, P. N. 61111, El-Minia, EGYPT.

² Production Engineering and Mechanical Design Department, Faculty of Engineering, Minia University, P. N. 61111, El-Minia, EGYPT.

10.21608/jest.2023.298053

Abstract

The present work proposes an electronic skin (e-skin) on the basis of the triboelectric effect and electrostatic induction with proper artificial tactile property. A lightweight e-skin responds to contact-separation and sliding with the object is illustrated. The e-skin consisted of carbon fibers (CF) coil wrapped on aluminium film of 0.1 mm thick as the electrode in PMMA core, while outer friction surface that generates the electrostatic charge (ESC) is composed of 0.1 mm thick Kapton film coating the substrate. Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) replaced Kapton to evaluate the performance of both Kapton and PTFE. The surface of the object was PA textile. The e-skin in form of substrate adhered to the finger has the ability to self-generate feedback electric signals. The proposed design can generate voltage from contact-separation and sliding.

It was found that voltage difference between Kapton/PA and PTFE/PA after contact-separation and sliding increased as the applied load increased. Both Kapton and PTFE fitted by CF showed relatively higher voltage because CF increased the voltage due to the electric induction. In addition to that, transverse sliding displayed higher voltage than that recorded for sliding in the direction of the CF. PTFE/PA displayed higher values of voltage than Kapton/PA. It can be recommended that the values of the voltage difference can be used as feedback signal to control the input voltage of the control motor that moves the finger fitted by e-skin. Besides, it is aimed in future work to propose a closed-loop control system of secure and safe grasping.

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