A color-based sensor to emulate skin’s sensitivity
In a step toward more autonomous soft robots and wearable technologies, EPFL researchers have created a device that uses color to simultaneously sense multiple mechanical and temperature stimuli
Robotics researchers have already made great strides in developing sensors that can perceive changes in position, pressure, and temperature – all of which are important for technologies like wearable devices and human-robot interfaces. But a hallmark of human perception is the ability to sense multiple stimuli at once, and this is something that robotics has struggled to achieve.
Now, Jamie Paik and colleagues in the Reconfigurable Robotics Lab (RRL) in EPFL’s School of Engineering have developed a sensor that can perceive combinations of bending, stretching, compression, and temperature changes, all using a robust system that boils down to a simple concept: color.
Dubbed ChromoSense, the RRL’s technology relies on a translucent rubber cylinder containing three sections dyed red, green, and blue. An LED at the top of the device sends light through its core, and changes in the light’s path through the colors as the device is bent or stretched are picked up by a miniaturized spectral meter at the bottom.
“Imagine you are drinking three different flavors of slushie through three different straws at once: the proportion of each flavor you get changes if you bend or twist the straws. This is the same principle that ChromoSense uses: it perceives changes in light traveling through the colored sections as the geometry of those sections deforms,” says Paik.
A thermosensitive section of the device also allows it to detect temperature changes, using a special dye – similar to that in color-changing t-shirts or mood rings – that desaturates in color when it is heated. The research has been published in Nature Communications.
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