Prof. Takao Someya and his research group have successfully developed an optical flexible pressure sensor sheet that can simultaneously detect vertical pressure and shear stress distribution. Both of these sensor sheets, which can simultaneously measure pressure in three axial directions, consist of three layers: a flexible surface light source, a pressure-sensitive rubber sheet, and an imager, with a total thickness of only 1.5 mm. Because of their flexibility, they can be mounted on curved surfaces, and are expected to be applied to health care and electronic skin of robots in the future. The resulting paper was published in the online edition of the U.S. scientific journal “Science Advances” on September 8.
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