With the advance of smartphones and other mobile devices, we’ve all been used to capacitive touch screens, but Tacterion, a German company born out of the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics, at the German Aerospace Center, has designed “artificial skin” sensors that bring capacitive touch and other features to all sort of materials. Since the company wants to protect its IP they don’t disclosed much details about the inner working of their sensors: The patent protected technology is completely polymer-based. The technological principle are sensitive elements that measure based on transition resistivity: The more pressure is exerted on the polymer-based, electrically conducting elements, the lower the transition resistivity is, which is being measured continuously. Using our highly integrated high-speed readout electronics, a matrix of sensor elements can be combined to form sensitive surfaces. The readout electronics provides information regarding pressure and its distribution at a frame rate of 400 Hz. […]
Tacterion Brings Capacitive Touch to Smart Clothing and Various Materials or Surfaces
