Towards Sustainable and Efficient Rapid Prototyping of Capacitive Sensor Arrays

Capacitive sensors are common ubiquitous sensing devices that permeate through many industries. The overwhelming majority of touchscreens use capacitive sensor arrays for the precise detection of touch. Many MEMS sensors use capacitance as the variable that is manipulated to detect the sensed parameter (e.g. accelerometers). However, the use of non-rigid, ambient, or custom capacitive sensor arrays has not seen the same level of adoption. CSAs (capacative sensor arrays) can be made from a wide array of materials and techniques-including 3d printing and laser ablation-to rapidly create CSAs that can be custom fit to enable proximity, force, and touch detection. This work investigates some of these materials and how they can be fabricated in a laboratory environment with a single robotic arm.