A Novel Vertical‐Structure Miniature ( Ф 9.5 mm) Six‐Axis Force/Torque Sensor With High Load Capacity for Dexterous Robotic Hands

With the rapid development of frontier applications, such as robotic dexterous hands and minimally invasive surgery, there is an urgent demand for miniature six‐axis force/torque ( F / T ) sensors that combine ultrasmall dimensions with high load capacity. While soft tactile sensors excel at texture recognition, they often lack the structural rigidity required for high‐precision closed‐loop force control. To address this, the study introduces a novel miniature six‐axis F / T sensor ( Ф 9.5 mm in diameter and 17 mm in height) featuring a stacked vertical structure, designed to serve as the “skeletal” proprioception node in a hierarchical sensing architecture. By optimizing the utilization of vertical space, force transmission paths, and stress distribution, this design achieves a high measurement range (150 N in the F z direction and 1 N m in the M z direction) within an extremely compact form factor. A backpropagation (BP) neural network optimized by particle swarm optimization (PSO) was employed for decoupling. The sensor exhibits a nonlinearity error of <0.4% F.S., a hysteresis error of <0.8% F.S., a repeatability error of <0.4% F.S., and a coupling error of <3% F.S. The proposed design demonstrates competitive static performance among representative miniature multiaxis F / T sensors of similar scale and provides a practical route toward ultrasmall, high‐robustness multidimensional force sensors. Given its ultracompact dimensions, the present prototype is well suited for dexterous robotic hands operating in space‐constrained environments; broader applications in minimally invasive surgery, haptic systems, or aerospace scenarios would require dedicated dynamic, fatigue, and, where relevant, biocompatibility and sterilization validation.