Tactile Touchpoints

What's a key difference between ordinary products and smart products? Smart products have senses. Many of today's smart products can see and hear - but what can the sense of touch do to better serve the end user? By sharing real-world cases and idea-generating concepts, Tactile Touchpoints aims to inspire engineers of the world's smart products to consider how embedding tactile force sensors can create new outlets for advancement in their respective markets.

Whether you've recently purchased a pack of FlexiForce™ sensors or a colleague has dropped a sample on your desk, you might be wondering the best way to get started. You may be asking yourself questions like "What type of load can I apply to the sensor?" or "How do I mount the sensor?" While every...

Harvesting blackberries requires a delicate touch to select and pick the ripe fruit without damage. It’s always been a slow and laborious process requiring manual labor. Graduate mechanical engineering students are working to change that with a soft robot berry picker that mimics the delicate grip...

6 Phases of Sensor Integration Blog Series This article is the fifth in a series documenting a design team’s experience in designing FlexiForce sensors into a medical device to detect occlusion within the pump mechanism. At this point, the team has already addressed the following phases of force...

6 Phases of Sensor Integration Blog Series This article is the fourth in a series following one design team’s experience in designing FlexiForce sensors into a medical device to detect occlusion within the pump mechanism. Previous articles in this series have addressed the team’s approach to the...

6 Phases of Sensor Integration Blog Series This article is the third in a series following one design team’s experience in designing FlexiForce sensors into a medical device to detect occlusion within the pump mechanism. When embedding components like force sensors, following an established...

6 Phases of Sensor Integration Blog Series In post 1 of our 6 Phases of Sensor Integration, we acknowledged that when embedding components like sensors, each application has unique nuances and there is no “one size fits all” approach. However, following an established framework and leveraging...

Secrets to a Successful Sensor Integration As the drivers of innovation, engineers rely on their education, experience, and instincts to make important choices on their design journey. Every embedded technology has unique inherent properties and nuances, and decisions made early in the process can...

Many familiar with lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery technology will say that it breathes. The act of charging and discharging causes changes in temperature, electrochemistry, and mechanics of the internal components that, in turn, changes internal pressures within the battery housing. For consumer...

Secrets to a Successful Sensor Integration In this half-hour podcast, Tekscan's Ed Haidar answers several questions from design engineers considering FlexiForce sensors for their OEM project. Some of the questions included: Basic parameters to consider for characterizing force sensors...

The COVID-19 era has taught all of us an important lesson about risk anticipation – especially in business. Certainly, the pandemic prompted a swift change in our way of life to such an extreme degree many of us could never have imagined. At the time of publishing this article in the summer of 2020...