Sensitivity improvements of a resonance-based tactile sensor

Resonance-based contact-impedance measurement refers to the application of resonance sensors based on the measurement of the changes in the resonance curve of an ultrasonic resonator in contact with a surface. The advantage of the resonance sensor is that it is very sensitive to small changes in the contact impedance. A sensitive micro tactile sensor (MTS) was developed, which measured the elasticity of soft living tissues at the single-cell level. In the present paper, we studied the method of improving the touch and stiffness sensitivity of the MTS. First, the dependence of touch sensitivity in relation to the resonator length was studied by calculating the sensitivity coefficient at each length ranging from 9 to 40?mm. The highest touch sensitivity was obtained with a 30-mm-long glass needle driven at a resonance frequency of 100?kHz. Next, the numerical calculation of contact impedance showed that the highest stiffness sensitivity was achieved when the driving frequency was 100?kHz and the contact-tip diameter of the MTS was 10?μm. The theoretical model was then confirmed experimentally using a phase-locked-loop-based digital feedback oscillation circuit. It was found that the developed MTS, whose resonant frequency was 97.030?kHz, performed with the highest sensitivity of 53.2?×?10⁶?Hz/N at the driving frequency of 97.986?kHz, i.e. the highest sensitivity was achieved at 956?Hz above the resonant frequency.