FootTile: a Rugged Foot Sensor for Force and Center of Pressure Sensing in Soft Terrain
This addresses the need for reliable force and pressure sensing in soft or rough terrains for applications like legged robotics or biomechanics, representing an incremental improvement over existing devices.
The researchers tackled the problem of sensing force and center of pressure in challenging terrain by developing FootTile, a rugged foot sensor, and demonstrated its accurate performance in granular substrate and liquid mud with specifications such as 0.9g weight and 330Hz sampling rate.
In this paper we present FootTile, a foot sensor for reaction force and center of pressure sensing in challenging terrain. We compare our sensor design to standard biomechanical devices, force plates and pressure plates. We show that FootTile can accurately estimate force and pressure distribution during legged locomotion. FootTile weighs 0.9g, has a sampling rate of 330Hz, a footprint of 10 by 10mm and can easily be adapted in sensor range to the required load case. In three experiments we validate: first the performance of the individual sensor, second an array of FootTiles for center of pressure sensing and third the ground reaction force estimation during locomotion in granular substrate. We then go on to show the accurate sensing capabilities of the waterproof sensor in liquid mud, as a showcase for real world rough terrain use.