LAUSR

It is strongly desirable but challenging to obtain force sensing mechanisms that are low-cost, volumetrically compact, away from contact location, and can be easily integrated into existing and emerging robot systems. For example, having a bulky force sensor near the tip of surgical robot tools may be impractical as it may require a large incision, infect biological tissues, and negatively affect surgeon's operation. In this letter, a new vibration-based approach was proposed to measure the force applied to a structure utilizing the structure's acceleration signals. By exciting the structure using a vibration motor, the structure's acceleration signals in time domain showed discernible ellipse-shaped profiles when a force was applied. For the first time, these acceleration profiles were characterized via regression and employed for estimating the direction and magnitude of the applied force. Experimental results showed that, the achieved resolutions with the proposed approach in estimating the direction and magnitude of the applied force were 10° and 0.098 N, respectively. The sensing errors were within the range of 8–18%. This force-sensing approach has strong potential for a wide area of robotic applications.