A Novel Tactile Sensor for Underwater Applications: Limits and Perspectives

The paper deals with the problem of designing tactile sensors for underwater applications. The tactile sensors are used in many terrestrial applications, but research in underwater tactile perception remains limited because of the scarcity of underwater tactile sensors. In this paper the authors, after a review on underwater sensors available in commerce and in literature, propose a conceptual design of novel tactile sensors for underwater applications. The investigations are performed in collaboration with a national Italian project named MARIS regarding the possible extension to the underwater field of the technologies developed for a terrestrial use, within the European project ROBOSKIN.