Design, development and experimental characterization of a force sensor for haptic interfaces

Working force measurement is a very important topic for several applications: In industrial field, it allows people to control the tools’ wear and the working’s quality; in robotics field, it allows people to control the force applied by the end-effector; on haptic interfaces, it allows the feedback between system and operator. This work deals with the design, development and experimental characterization of a three axis strain gauge force sensor for haptic interfaces. A constraint of the design and development process has been the integration of the sensor inside the structure of a haptic device developed in previous works. The end-effector of such haptic device has three degrees of freedom, and in particular it can accomplish only translational motions, while rotations aren’t allowed. Hence the sensor must be able to measure only the three spatial components of the force acting on the end-effector itself. After the design and development phases, experimental tests have been carried out in order to characterize the sensor from both the static and the dynamic point of view.