Design, fabrication, and characterization of a compliant shear force sensor for a human-machine interface

The sensor principle was characterized by analytical calculation and finite element method (FEM) analysis. Finally, the functional model was evaluated with metrological tests. Thereby, it was supplied with an internal pressure ranging from 0 to 0.045 MPa in 0.005 MPa increments and simultaneously loaded with a shear force. Depending on the pressure and the direction in which the shear force was applied, the minimum shear force required to activate the detection circuit was in the range 2.6-6.8 N. The determined sensor characteristic showed a high linearity (R2 > 0.998).