Advances in tactile sensors design/manufacturing and its impact on robotics applications - a review

Purpose - Reviews the benefits and potential application of tactile sensors for use with robots. Design/methodology/approach - Includes the most recent advances in both the design/manufacturing of various tactile sensors and their applications in different industries. Although these types of sensors have been adopted in a considerable number of areas, the applications such as, medical, agricultural/livestock and food, grippers/manipulators design, prosthetic, and environmental studies have gained more popularity and are presented in this paper. Findings - Robots can perform very useful and repetitive tasks in controlled environments. However, when the robots are required to handle the unstructured and changing environments, there is a need for more elaborate means to improve their performance. In this scenario, tactile sensors can play a major role. In the unstructured environments, the robots must be able to grasp objects (or tissues, in the case of medical robots) and move objects from one location to another. Originality/value - In this work, the emphasis was on the most interesting and fast developing areas of the tactile sensors applications, including, medical, agriculture and food, grippers and manipulators design, prosthetic, and environmental studies.