Electrical Impedance Tomography for Artificial Sensitive Robotic Skin: A Review

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is a nondestructive imaging technique used to estimate the internal conductivity distribution of a conductive domain by taking potential measurements only at the domain boundaries. If a thin electrically conductive material that responds to pressure with local changes in conductivity is used as a conductive domain, then EIT can be used to create a large-scale pressure-sensitive artificial skin for robotics applications. This paper presents a review of EIT and its application as a robotics sensitive skin, including EIT excitation and image reconstruction techniques, materials, and skin fabrication techniques. Touch interpretation via EIT-based artificial skins is also reviewed.

I. Introduction

Over the last decade the field of robotics has seen a significant increase in human-robot interaction (HRI) research [1]. As robots begin to be deployed outside engineered factory environments and the distance between humans and robots narrows, there is an increasing need for robots to have capabilities that will allow them to interact fluently and intuitively with humans [2]. Although significant progress has been made in the area of audio-visual communication [3], until recently the field of touch has been significantly neglected.