US EPA

6607623 

Book/Book Chapter 

A mono-structural thin plate touch sensor with three sensing functions for discrimination of material properties 

Shida, K; Desheng, L 

1994 

ICARCV '94. The Third International Conference on Automation, Robotics and Computer Vision. Proceedings 

1914-18 vol.3 

INSPEC:5353136 

In order to discriminate the characteristics of objects by placing a sensor on the surface of test materials, a new mono-structural thin plate touch sensor with three sensing functions was developed. These three sensing functions of the sensor are a thermal sensing function, a permeability-electric conductivity sensing function and a permittivity sensing function, applying four physical properties of materials: thermal conductivity, magnetic permeability, electric conductivity and permittivity. The sensor is constructed as a mono-structure formed by a pair of filamentary spiral wires on a thin insulated plate. Each sensing function can be realized by changing a connection of the wiring in the measurement circuit with the sensor. By expressing each of two kinds of measurement results on the x-y plane as a pattern (such as a result of thermal property and a permeability-electric conductivity property, a result of a permeability-electric conductivity property and a permittivity property, or a result of a thermal property and a permittivity property), it was found that eight kinds of samples (iron, aluminum, copper, bronze, gum, wood, acrylic reign and styrene foam) were roughly separated into several groups in each x-y indication. Moreover, it was found that the magnifications of measurement values in each group could discriminate the materials in each group to within a certain error.