Tactile Sensing with Fiber Optics

AFRC will develop a method of designing for integration and fabricating the sensing skin \nJPL's rapid prototyping facilities will iteratively create sensing skins \nGRC will perform testing of sensing wheels.Synthetic skin enables a user to obtain distributed (1,000s to 10,000s) pressure information in a 2-D grid over large surface areas when paired with fiber optic sensors. \nFiber optic sensors do not require individual transducers per sensor\nCarrier structure acts as a protective layer to the sensors\nCan be molded to a variety of shapes

Develop a synthetic skin with embedded distributed fiber optic sensors to provide tactile sensing to mechanical sy stems. Enable mechanical systems to adapt to unexpected disturbances in their operational environment. Apply technology to robotic wheels Through this CIF, fiber optic sensors are applied to multiple wheel designs including a rigid wheel design (similar to the Curiosity wheel) and to a modern mesh/spring wheel (similarto the Lunar rover wheel).These measurements techniques provide new opportunities to study the performance of the wheel designs, and potentially extending the mission time of a robotic rover through structural health monitoring.

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