School of Electrical and Information Engineering, Wuhan Institute of Technology, Wuhan 430205, China.
Hubei Key Laboratory of Digital Textile Equipment, Wuhan Textile University, Wuhan 430200, China.
Sensors (Basel). 2022 Jul 5;22(13):5047. doi: 10.3390/s22135047.
Soft sensing technologies offer promising prospects in the fields of soft robots, wearable devices, and biomedical instruments. However, the structural design, fabrication process, and sensing algorithm design of the soft devices confront great difficulties. In this paper, a soft tactile actuator (STA) with both the actuation function and sensing function is presented. The tactile physiotherapy finger of the STA was fabricated by a fluid silica gel material. Before pulse detection, the tactile physiotherapy finger was actuated to the detection position by injecting compressed air into its chamber. The pulse detecting algorithm, which realized the pulse detection function of the STA, is presented. Finally, in actual pulse detection experiments, the pulse values of the volunteers detected by using the STA and by employing a professional pulse meter were close, which illustrates the effectiveness of the pulse detecting algorithm of the STA.
软传感技术在软机器人、可穿戴设备和生物医学仪器等领域具有广阔的应用前景。然而，软设备的结构设计、制造工艺和传感算法设计都面临着巨大的困难。本文提出了一种具有驱动功能和传感功能的软触觉执行器（STA）。STA 的触觉理疗指通过注射压缩空气到其腔室内来制作的，该材料由流体硅胶制成。在进行脉搏检测之前，通过向 STA 的腔室内注入压缩空气将触觉理疗指驱动到检测位置。提出了用于实现 STA 的脉搏检测功能的脉搏检测算法。最后，在实际的脉搏检测实验中，使用 STA 检测志愿者的脉搏值与使用专业脉搏计检测的脉搏值非常接近，这说明了 STA 的脉搏检测算法的有效性。
