Development of high-stiffness touch sensor and its application to measuring instruments

This paper proposes a novel method for determining the shape and coordinate of a 3D object. Instead of a flexible conventional touch probe, a high-stiffness bilateral vibration touch sensor was developed. The proposed sensor consisted of a piezo-electric device and thin probe, so that it could withstand high rates of acceleration. This sensor achieved remarkable results with respect to short time measurements. A nonlinear synchronous multi-axis control algorithm was also proposed, in order to scan the surface of arbitrary objects and measure their 3D shape. The effectiveness of our proposed sensor and control algorithm was demonstrated through experiments and simulations.