Distributed Haptic Chips With Materials’ Multifunctionalities for Dual‐Way Tactile Communication Enabled Terrain Recognition and Reconstruction in Robotic Teleoperation

ABSTRACT

Current robotic teleoperations rely on vision‐based detection and feedback of the operation environment. Establishing dual‐way tactile sensing and feedback remains challenging for improving comprehensive status awareness. Here, with the aid of laser induced graphene and silicone materials, we present a haptic chip capable of providing multi‐dimensional and multi‐modal tactile sensing and feedback for both the master side and slave side in a teleoperation system. A triboelectric and piezoresistive sensing array with three‐dimensional dynamic and static tactile sensing. The space of triboelectrification is re‐used as pneumatic haptic feedback at the master side, and the laser induced graphene layer of the piezoresistive sensor also can be used as a thermal heater. Moreover, a piezoelectric chip is also integrated to offer high‐frequency tactile sensing and feedback. Multiple haptic chips can implement a distributed tactile communication network. A hexapod with haptic chips allows the basic identification of territory, attitude, and texture during walking and climbing. Meanwhile, they can then be selectively regenerated at the haptic chip array of the master side directly, and control commands can be sent out by the haptic chip as well. Overall, the haptic chip‐based tactile communication system acts as a complementary control interface to the vision system, which possesses advantages for the teleoperation of robots in special tasks.