Design of 3D-Printed Soft Sensors for Wire Management and Customized Softness

ABSTRACT Although the interaction capability of soft sensors has been explored in the field of HCI, they are found to have limitations in shape, wiring management, and softness due to the characteristics of the material. In this paper, we propose a design of 3D-printed resistive soft sensors that can detect deformation by creating internal lattice structures with flexible conductive materials. The magnitude of deformation can be detected by measuring the resistance between a pair of electrodes. By adjusting the parameters of the lattice structure, a soft sensor with high flexibility of shape design and adjustable local softness can be realized. In addition, by inserting non-conductive structures into the sensor structure, external wires can be consolidated in one place. We present a design and fabrication pipeline, and investigate the fundamental characteristics of several patterns of sensors. We also show several applications that demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method.