Date of Award

12-1993

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Electrical Engineering

Department

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

First Advisor

Victor M. Bright, PhD

Second Advisor

Edward S. Kolesar, PhD

Abstract

The purpose of this research effort was to investigate the performance of a piezoelectric tactile sensor design and appropriately refine it. The sensor was fabricated from an 8 x 8 electrode array MOS integrated circuit. Each taxel in the array was 400 microns x 400 microns. A 6 mm x 6 mm piece of piezoelectric polyvinylidene fluoride was adhered to the electrode array using a urethane dielectric adhesive to form the active sensing area of the sensor. An amplifier was investigated to enhance the range of the tactile sensor's output signal. The amplifier is a high input' impedance differential amplifier with a linear range from 1 to 17 V. The unique feature of the differential amplifier was that it used a power supply of only 12 V. The spatial resolution of the sensor is 0.7 mm. The lower force limit of the sensor is 1 g while the upper limit, limited by a previous amplifier design with a range from 2.5 to 7 V, is 130 g. The dynamic range of the sensor is 130:1. The sensor's force sensitivity is 7.35 g. The pyroelectric bandwidth of the sensor is 0.083 Hz, and the temperature sensitivity of the sensor is 0.39 degrees Celsius.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-GE-ENG-93D-06

DTIC Accession Number

ADA274038

Comments

The author's Vita page is omitted.

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