{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,6]],"date-time":"2026-07-06T12:12:54Z","timestamp":1783339974837,"version":"3.54.6"},"reference-count":29,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"22","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2019,11,12]],"date-time":"2019-11-12T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1573516800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"Valma Angliss Trust","award":["000"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["000"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>The resolution of contact location is important in many applications in robotics and automation. This is generally done by using an array of contact or tactile receptors, which increases cost and complexity as the required resolution or area is increased. Tactile sensors have also been developed using a continuous deformable medium between the contact and the receptors, which allows few receptors to interpolate the information among them, avoiding the weakness highlighted in the former approach. The latter is generally used to measure contact force intensity or magnitude but rarely used to identify the contact locations. This paper presents a systematic design and characterisation procedure for magnetic-based soft tactile sensors (utilizing the latter approach with the deformable contact medium) with the goal of locating the contact force location. This systematic procedure provides conditions under which design parameters can be selected, supported by a selected machine learning algorithm, to achieve the desired performance of the tactile sensor in identifying the contact location. An illustrative example, which combines a particular sensor configuration (magnetic hall effect sensor as the receptor, a selected continuous medium and a selected sensing resolution) and a specific data-driven algorithm, is used to illustrate the proposed design procedure. The results of the illustrative example design demonstrates the efficacy of the proposed design procedure and the proposed sensing strategy in identifying a contact location. The resulting sensor is also tested on a robotic hand (Allegro Hand, SimLab Co) to demonstrate its application in real-world scenarios.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s19224925","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,11,13]],"date-time":"2019-11-13T09:11:27Z","timestamp":1573636287000},"page":"4925","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":51,"title":["Magnetic-based Soft Tactile Sensors with Deformable Continuous Force Transfer Medium for Resolving Contact Locations in Robotic Grasping and Manipulation"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"19","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-5561-1322","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Alireza","family":"Mohammadi","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3040, Australia"},{"name":"Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, Wollongong, NSW 2500, Australia"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-4320-0064","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Yangmengfei","family":"Xu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3040, Australia"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-8495-0246","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ying","family":"Tan","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3040, Australia"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-3522-7374","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Peter","family":"Choong","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, Wollongong, NSW 2500, Australia"},{"name":"Department of Surgery, University of Melbourne, St Vincent\u2019s Hospital, Fitzroy, VIC 3065, Australia"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2680-6489","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Denny","family":"Oetomo","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3040, Australia"},{"name":"Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, Wollongong, NSW 2500, Australia"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,11,12]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"3","DOI":"10.1177\/027836498600400401","article-title":"Analysis of multifingered hands","volume":"4","author":"Kerr","year":"1986","journal-title":"Int. J. Robot. Res."},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1170","DOI":"10.1109\/TRO.2012.2197310","article-title":"Grasp input optimization taking contact position and object information uncertainties into consideration","volume":"28","author":"Fungtammasan","year":"2012","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Robot."},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"406","DOI":"10.1109\/70.499823","article-title":"Dextrous hand grasping force optimization","volume":"12","author":"Buss","year":"1996","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Robot. Autom."},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"439","DOI":"10.1109\/70.149943","article-title":"Real-time force optimization in parallel kinematic chains under inequality constraints","volume":"8","author":"Nahon","year":"1991","journal-title":"IEEE Int. Conf. Robot. Autom."},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1064","DOI":"10.1109\/LRA.2018.2794612","article-title":"Tactile-based blind grasping: A discrete-time object manipulation controller for robotic hands","volume":"3","author":"Oetomo","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Robot. Autom. Lett."},{"key":"ref_6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"104136","DOI":"10.1016\/j.conengprac.2019.104136","article-title":"Robust Object Manipulation for Tactile-based Blind Grasping","volume":"92","author":"Oetomo","year":"2019","journal-title":"Control Eng. Pract."},{"key":"ref_7","unstructured":"Shaw-Cortez, W., Oetomo, D., Manzie, C., and Choong, P. (2019). Control Barrier Functions for Mechanical Systems: Theory and Applications to Robotic Grasping. IEEE Trans. Cont. Syst. Tech., in press."},{"key":"ref_8","first-page":"092305-13","article-title":"Unilateral manipulability quality indices: Generalised manipulability measures for unilaterally actuated robots","volume":"14","author":"Eden","year":"2019","journal-title":"ASME J. of Mech. Design"},{"key":"ref_9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Kawamura, A., Tahara, K., Kurazume, R., and Hasegawa, T. (2009, January 10\u201315). Dynamic grasping for an arbitrary polyhedral object by a multi-fingered hand-arm system. Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE\/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), St. Louis, MO, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/IROS.2009.5354174"},{"key":"ref_10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"217","DOI":"10.1016\/0921-8890(95)00068-2","article-title":"Comparison of contact sensor localization abilities during manipulation","volume":"17","author":"Son","year":"1996","journal-title":"Robot. Auton. Syst."},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Molchanov, A., Kroemer, O., Su, Z., and Sukhatme, G.S. (2016, January 9\u201314). Contact localization on grasped objects using tactile sensing. Proceedings of the 2016 IEEE\/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Daejeon, Korea.","DOI":"10.1109\/IROS.2016.7759058"},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"195","DOI":"10.1016\/j.robot.2015.07.015","article-title":"Tactile sensing in dexterous robot hands","volume":"74","author":"Kappassov","year":"2015","journal-title":"Robot. Auton. Syst."},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"169","DOI":"10.1016\/j.sna.2007.08.013","article-title":"A novel intelligent textile technology based on silicon flexible skins","volume":"143","author":"Katragadda","year":"2008","journal-title":"Sens. Actuators A Phys."},{"key":"ref_14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Noda, K., Hashimoto, Y., Tanaka, Y., and Shimoyama, I. (2009, January 21\u201325). MEMS on robot applications. Proceedings of the International Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems Conference, Denver, CO, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/SENSOR.2009.5285608"},{"key":"ref_15","unstructured":"Kerpa, O., Weiss, K., and Worn, H. (2003, January 27\u201331). Development of a flexible tactile sensor system for a humanoid robot. Proceedings of the IEEE\/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Las Vegas, NV, USA."},{"key":"ref_16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"89","DOI":"10.1109\/MRA.2014.2310152","article-title":"The feel of MEMS barometers: Inexpensive and easily customized tactile array sensors","volume":"21","author":"Tenzer","year":"2014","journal-title":"IEEE Robot. Autom. Mag."},{"key":"ref_17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2584","DOI":"10.1109\/LRA.2018.2812915","article-title":"A new silicone structure for uSkin\u2014A soft, distributed, digital 3-axis skin sensor and its integration on the humanoid robot iCub","volume":"3","author":"Tomo","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Robot. Autom. Lett."},{"key":"ref_18","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Koike, M., Saga, S., Okatani, T., and Deguchi, K. (2011, January 21\u201324). Sensing method of total-internal-reflection-based tactile sensor. Proceedings of the 2011 IEEE World Haptics Conference, Istanbul, Turkey.","DOI":"10.1109\/WHC.2011.5945556"},{"key":"ref_19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1800541","DOI":"10.1002\/advs.201800541","article-title":"Toward perceptive soft robots: Progress and challenges","volume":"5","author":"Wang","year":"2018","journal-title":"Adv. Sci."},{"key":"ref_20","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Winstone, B., Griffiths, G., Melhuish, C., Pipe, T., and Rossiter, J. (2012, January 11\u201314). TACTIP\u2014Tactile fingertip device, challenges in reduction of size to ready for robot hand integration. Proceedings of the 2012 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics (ROBIO), Guangzhou, China.","DOI":"10.1109\/ROBIO.2012.6490960"},{"key":"ref_21","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"216","DOI":"10.1089\/soro.2017.0052","article-title":"The tactip family: Soft optical tactile sensors with 3d-printed biomimetic morphologies","volume":"5","author":"Pestell","year":"2018","journal-title":"Soft Robot."},{"key":"ref_22","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Mohammadi, A., Lavranos, J., Choong, P., and Oetomo, D. (2018). X-Limb: A soft prosthetic hand with user-friendly interface. International Conference on NeuroRehabilitation, Springer.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-030-01845-0_16"},{"key":"ref_23","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Godfrey, S.B., Zhao, K.D., Theuer, A., Catalano, M.G., Bianchi, M., Breighner, R., Bhaskaran, D., Lennon, R., Grioli, G., and Santello, M. (2018). The SoftHand Pro: Functional evaluation of a novel, flexible, and robust myoelectric prosthesis. PLoS ONE, 13.","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pone.0205653"},{"key":"ref_24","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Tomo, T., Somlor, S., Schmitz, A., Jamone, L., Huang, W., Kristanto, H., and Sugano, S. (2016). Design and characterization of a three-axis hall effect-based soft skin sensor. Sensors, 16.","DOI":"10.3390\/s16040491"},{"key":"ref_25","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Wang, H., De Boer, G., Kow, J., Alazmani, A., Ghajari, M., Hewson, R., and Culmer, P. (2016). Design methodology for magnetic field-based soft tri-axis tactile sensors. Sensors, 16.","DOI":"10.3390\/s16091356"},{"key":"ref_26","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Funabashi, S., Yan, G., Geier, A., Schmitz, A., Ogata, T., and Sugano, S. (2019, January 20\u201324). Morphology-Specific Convolutional Neural Networks for Tactile Object Recognition with a Multi-Fingered Hand. Proceedings of the 2019 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Montreal, QC, Canada.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICRA.2019.8793901"},{"key":"ref_27","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"3852","DOI":"10.1109\/JSEN.2018.2814839","article-title":"Design, modeling, and validation of a soft magnetic 3-D force sensor","volume":"18","author":"Dwivedi","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Sens. J."},{"key":"ref_28","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"474","DOI":"10.1109\/JSEN.2018.2878774","article-title":"Touch Position Detection in Electrical Tomography Tactile Sensors Through Quadratic Classifier","volume":"19","author":"Russo","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Sens. J."},{"key":"ref_29","unstructured":"Jackson, J.D. (2017). Classical Electrodynamics, Wiley."}],"container-title":["Sensors"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1424-8220\/19\/22\/4925\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T13:33:49Z","timestamp":1760189629000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1424-8220\/19\/22\/4925"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2019,11,12]]},"references-count":29,"journal-issue":{"issue":"22","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,11]]}},"alternative-id":["s19224925"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/s19224925","relation":{},"ISSN":["1424-8220"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1424-8220","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2019,11,12]]}}}