Development of a tactile sensor system for reading Braille: fundamental characteristics of the prototype sensor system

This paper is a study on the development of a tactile sensor system for reading Braille. The tactile sensor uses a PVDF (polyvinylidene fluoride) film as the sensory material. The sensor is attached to a slider driven by a DC servomotor and it is slid over a string of Braille with a constant speed to obtain the sensor output. A recognition system of Braille is proposed. In a recognition experiment, the sensor system is verified as to whether it has enough performance to recognize a string of letters appropriately. The obtained result shows that the proposed sensor and sensor system are effective to recognize Braille.