QTC Sensors, Voice Coil Linear Actuators, Electric Field Sensors...

[bryan922]

I've been reading the white papers on MIT's Sociable Robots - in particular the Huggable: http://robotic.media.mit.edu/projects/robots/huggable/overview/overview.html

Some information on the touch sensitivity is here:
http://robotic.media.mit.edu/projects/robots/huggable/affective/affectivetouch.html

Towards the bottom I post some links to PDFs which go into more detail (particular parts, design, etc.) on the Huggable.

They use Peratech QTC sensors for pressure sensitivity, thermistors for temperature sensitivity and a Motorola chip for electrostatic sensing of human skin.

They also use back drivable voice coil linear actuators for movement. These actuators are silent, back drivable, have few moving parts, are fast and have decent torque.

I went to the Peratech site, but couldn't find any resellers, but a search on this site for QTC reveals one possible source for some type of QTC sensor: http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=44202&criteria=qtc&doy=24m4

I couldn't find information on the Motorola/Freescale Semiconductor 33794 electric field sensing integrated circuit.

I did find this info on voice coil linear actuators (presumably back drivable):
http://www.h2wtech.com/noncommdcactu.htm
http://www.moticont.com/voice-coil-motor.htm

The real interest of this post though are the PDF white papers:

Design of a Therapeutic Robotic Companion for Relational
http://web.media.mit.edu/~wdstiehl/Publications/Stiehl_Roman2005.pdf

Affective Touch for Robotic Companions
http://web.media.mit.edu/~wdstiehl/Publications/StiehlAffectiveTouch.pdf

The huggable robot Probo: design of the robotic head
http://www.aisb.org.uk/convention/aisb08/proc/proceedings/01%20Reign%20of%20Catz%20Dogz/06.pdf

On the design of an emotional interface for the huggable robot Probo
http://www.aisb.org.uk/convention/aisb08/proc/proceedings/01%20Reign%20of%20Catz%20Dogz/01.pdf

I'd be really interested in discussing QTC sensors, electrostatic sensors, and voice coil linear actuators here, in terms of what to buy, how to wire them up, etc.

My specialty is C coding, so I'd love to get my hands on this stuff and write some C code for control and reading...

[bryan922]

Another article: A "Sensitive Skin" for Robotic Companions Featuring
Temperature, Force, and Electric Field Sensors --> http://robotic.media.mit.edu/pdfs/conferences/StiehlBreazeal-IROS-06.pdf

And information on the MC33794:
http://automatizace.hw.cz/storage/MC33794FS.pdf

If anyone knows where to get an MC33794, what they cost, and how one might interface one to an Ardiuno board, let me know...

UPDATE: Found the MC33794 here: http://www.mouser.com/Search/Refine.aspx?Msid=55700000&Keyword=MC33794EK

[bryan922]

Is nobody interested in using these components?

[want2learn]

Of your list, I've only used QTC pipe and pills before. I'm sure there will be many possible way's to use them in a circuit but i simply made a voltage divider with the qtc and a resistor.
I'm pretty interested in all of this thread but haven't used the others and haven't read the papers yet but i'll get there.

[bryan922]

Of your list, I've only used QTC pipe and pills before.

What is QTC pipe?

Anyway, using QTC sensors looks easy enough. I'm considering gluing them to custom made circuit boards that have a matrix of connections and then feeding the connections into a multiplexer (as per an Arduino tutorial on how to read sensors with a multiplexer).

Right now I'm having trouble finding a US distributor for QTC sensors.

If anyone wants to try experiment (or has experimented) with the Freescale Semiconductor 33794 electric field sensing integrated circuit, please share your thoughts here. If you're unfamiliar with it, please read the way the MIT program is using it, and I'm sure you'll find it interesting.

I'm really interested in the voice coil linear actuators as well, but again, getting information about them is difficult.