Tactile perception of textile surfaces from an artificial finger instrumented by a polymeric optical fibre

This study aims at designing an instrumented artificial finger able to reproduce friction behaviour with textile surfaces. The developed artificial finger was based on a polymeric optical fibre sensor inside a polydimethylsiloxane core and an external layer with a texture similar to a fingerprint. The results obtained with textile surfaces show a good correlation with the human finger in terms of the coefficient of friction and perception of the sliding direction. The signal obtained is a combination of normal and friction forces. Therefore, like a real finger, this artificial finger is sensitive to both shear and compression.