About this Abstract |
| Meeting |
2027 TMS Annual Meeting & Exhibition
|
| Symposium
|
Biological Materials Science
|
| Presentation Title |
Fluidic Tactile Sensing in Soft Porous Foam Skins |
| Author(s) |
Daniel John Preston |
| On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Daniel John Preston |
| Abstract Scope |
Biological materials achieve distributed sensing, adaptation, and multifunctionality through compliant and continuous architectures rather than discrete embedded components. Drawing inspiration from these principles, we developed a soft pneumatic tactile-sensing skin based on open-cell foam, in which the interconnected pore network functions as a mechanofluidic sensing medium. Local contact deforms the foam and reshapes its internal pneumatic resistance network; airflow through this altered network produces boundary pressure signatures that encode contact location and applied force. The foam is hermetically sealed between polymeric films, with pressure sensors attached only at the periphery, preserving compliance and scalability. We used computational fluid dynamics to guide sensor placement and sensing architecture design; machine learning models then decode the boundary pressure signals to infer tactile inputs. The resulting skin achieves 3 mm spatial resolution and 0.5 N force discrimination, while conforming to irregular and curved surfaces on both human and robotic bodies. |
| Proceedings Inclusion? |
Planned: |
| Keywords |
Computational Materials Science & Engineering, |