Optical fiber tactile sensor with bioinspired whisker transducer

Eric Fujiwara

doi:10.1117/12.3021986

28 May 2024 Optical fiber tactile sensor with bioinspired whisker transducer

Eric Fujiwara

Proceedings Volume 13083, SPIE Future Sensing Technologies 2024; 130830Q (2024) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3021986
Event: SPIE Future Sensing Technologies, 2024, Yokohama, Japan

Abstract

Whiskers (vibrissae) are functional hairs connected to a mechanically sensitive base and devoted to tactile surveillance by contact or approximation. Nowadays, bioinspired robots equipped with electronic, piezoelectric, or magnetic whisker-like transducers are available for 3D localization, texture recognition, and shape retrieval. However, these sensors demand a multi-axis response for decoding the magnitude and direction of applied stimuli, making the interrogation hardware intricate with excessive measurement channels. Therefore, we propose a biocompatible whisker device based on an optical fiber specklegram sensor, wherein the transducer comprises a flexible, conical structure made of glycerol-agar gel. The whisker foundation embeds a short single-mode fiber section spliced between multimode waveguides to create a hetero-core structure responsive to the vibrissa bending. Thus, we excite the optical fiber with a 633 nm laser and analyze the output speckle field through image correlation techniques. Stimulation with transverse displacements revealed sensitivity and resolution of 0.09 mm⁻¹ and 0.62 mm, respectively. Furthermore, one may calibrate the correlation algorithm with additional reference speckle images to retrieve the bending magnitude and direction with a single optical channel, avoiding wavelength-based demodulation schemes. We anticipate applications of such compact, biocompatible whisker probes in tactile surveillance regarding biomedical and human-robot interaction setups.

Conference Presentation

(2024) Published by SPIE. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Citation Download Citation

Eric Fujiwara "Optical fiber tactile sensor with bioinspired whisker transducer", Proc. SPIE 13083, SPIE Future Sensing Technologies 2024, 130830Q (28 May 2024); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3021986

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