Scalable Dynamic Tactile Sensing Enabled by Passive and Flexible Acoustic Waveguides

Abstract:Artificial dynamic tactile sensing requires sensitivity, robustness, and compliance, yet existing technologies face trade-offs when scaling to large-area arrays, compounded by wiring complexity and cost. Here, we report a passive distributed paradigm using deep sub-wavelength acoustic waveguides that decouples performance from structural flexibility. Elastic-membrane-capped Helmholtz resonators interconnected by spring-reinforced microtubes form an enclosed network with invariant acoustic transmission under macroscopic bending. By sparsely embedding microphones, the system achieves real-time localization (4 mm highest spatial resolution; >99% accuracy in a 4 microphones 64-node sensing array) and waveform reconstruction of low-frequency signals (<100 Hz). Fast Continuous Wavelet Transform and a lightweight neural network enable inference within 5.5 ms. We demonstrate conformable prototypes-fingertip arrays, a tactile glove, and large-area skins-detecting stimuli from single-hair contact to 5-mg particle impacts, arterial pulse waves, feather touches, and finger contact. This establishes a scalable, flexible, low-cost paradigm for next-generation human-machine interfaces.

Robotics (cs.RO)

arXiv:2606.13746 [cs.RO]

(or arXiv:2606.13746v1 [cs.RO] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.13746 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

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