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Although the sense of touch is crucial for humans, most humanoid robots lack tactile sensitivity. While there are a large number of detection technologies, it is not trivial to incorporate them into a robot. We have developed a flexible "skin" for the humanoids that integrates a distributed pressure sensor based on capacitive technology. The skin is modular and can be deployed on non-flat surfaces. Each module locally scans a limited number of touch detection elements and sends the data through a serial bus. This is a critical advantage as it reduces the number of cables. The resulting system is compact and has been successfully integrated into three different humanoid robots. We have performed tests that show that the sensor has favorable features and algorithms implemented to compensate for hysteresis and sensor drift.

The lack of sensitive skin for robots has proven to be a key limitation that impedes human-type performance in tasks that require controlled physical interactions in uncontrolled environments. Touch detection is crucial for safe interactions of robots with humans and objects, because contact detection provides the most direct response to control contact forces in both voluntary and unintended interactions with the environment. Beyond the classic robot interaction tasks (eg, the peg-in-hole problem), where contact is expected and planned to occur at specific robot locations, more advanced applications require more complex forms of interaction: location and the characteristics of the contact can not be predicted or modeled beforehand. Therefore, a touch sensor system is required, which is capable of measuring contact forces over large areas.