A Wearable Three-Axis Tactile Sensor for Human Fingertips

Human training data can scaffold robot imitation learning. However, most datagloves only record joint angles, but for many tasks, force control is more important. They also cover the human skin, thereby making a natural interaction of the human with the object impossible. This letter suggests a wearable sensor that can measure the three-axis force vector exerted at the fingertip, without covering the skin that contacts the object. Using two small-sized Hall effect based three-axis sensors mounted on the sides of the fingertips, the finger pad deformation resulting from the force vector acting on the fingertip is measured. Experiments with ten subjects show that the force vectors can be measured with reasonable precision. Furthermore, the influence of the Earth's magnetic field and the finger's orientation on the finger tactile sensor's measurement has been reduced from ± 4N to ± 1N.