POSFET Devices Based Tactile Sensing Arrays

This work presents and experimentally evaluates novel POSFET (Piezoelectric Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor) devices based tactile sensing arrays. The arrays, primarily developed for the robotic applications, consist of 5 × 5 POSFET touch sensing devices or taxels. The POSFET touch sensing devices are developed by spin coating piezoelectric polymer P(VDF-TrFE) film on the gate area of MOS devices and polarizing the film in situ. To detect contact events, the taxels utilize the contact forces induced change in the polarization level (and hence change in the induced channel current) of piezoelectric polymer. Both, individual taxels and the array are designed to match spatio-temporal performance of the human fingertips. Experimental results demonstrate that the POSFET tactile sensing arrays presented here are able to detect complex dynamic contact events such as rolling of an object.