Flexible building blocks: Modularized design concept of a six-axis force/torque sensor

Six-axis force/torque sensors have lots of application in robotics and automation areas. A novel modularized design concept to formulate six-axis force/torque sensors is introduced in this paper, which provide a flexible and low-cost solution to measure multi-dimensional force/torque signal using a modularized assembly of several off-the-shelf 1-D force sensors. Matrix-based force measuring model are derived to compute the six-axis force/torque signal from the output signal of nine 1-D force sensors. Detailed structural design is explained and preliminary calibration method is introduced to compensate the assembly error. The preliminary experiment results illustrate the feasibility of this modularized design concept. The output signal of the six-axis force/torque signal is consistent with the reference signal measured by an ATI Nano-17 force/torque sensor. One major advantage of this design concept is its flexibility, i.e. we can easily adapt the mechanical structure to design multi-dimensional force/torque sensors ranging from 2-DOFs to 6-DoFs (Degree-of Freedoms).