Tactile sensing using tensor cell

Proposes a new tactile sensory structure using integrated sensing elements which the authors call a tensor cell. It is located sparsely in a flexible body of a tactile sensor, and samples there the complete information of a stress tensor which requires six degrees of freedom to describe it. The authors clarify first the advantage of this architecture theoretically based on elasticity theory and matrix algebra. Then the design of the actual tensor cell and experimental results are described, and an application of it to contact surface characterization is shown.