Development of prosthetic skin

The objective of this research was to embed tactile sensors in polyimides. This novel method could be utilized to realize prosthetic skin for sensing different kinds of mechanical stimuli. Tactile sensors have an increasing demand in medical sectors: upper and lower-limb prosthetics and in the industrial sectors: robot end-effectors, grippers and manipulators. The sensors developed are targeted for prosthetic arm tactile sensing applications. Current work presents piezoresistive differential pressure sensors fabricated on flexible polyimide film or substrate.;A unique technique to bond a flexible superstrate polyimide layer to a MEMS tactile sensor array is presented in this thesis. The sensor is made of aluminium oxide membrane layer with nichrome piezoresistors as the half-Wheatstone bridge elements. Four different types of sensor designs have been characterized to obtain gauge factor of thin film nichrome. The sensor arrays with and without the superstrate film were simulated for obtaining the maximum stress, average strain and deflection of the membrane. The maximum change in output voltage was 0.8 mV. The gauge factors calculated for tactile sensor with superstrate range between 2.2 to 7.8 and without superstrate range 1.5 to 5.7.