Improving Sensing Coverage and Compliance of 3D-Printed Artificial Skins Through Multi-Modal Sensing and Soft Materials

Abstract

3D-printed artificial skins are a scalable approach to whole-body tactile and proximity coverage, but prior implementations have been limited to unimodal sensing and rigid materials. To improve the practical usability of 3D-printed artificial skins, we present a hybrid time-of-flight (ToF) and self-capacitance (SC) sensing skin that demonstrates multi-modal sensing integration, soft compliant coverings for impact absorption and pressure sensing, and a streamlined electrical interface between printed conductive traces and external electronics. We show that combining ToF and SC modalities enables contact detection, scene reconstruction, and pressure-correlated tactile responses with the compliant covering by deploying six artificial skin units with 40 sensing elements over an FR3 robot arm.

arXiv commentThis work was accepted at the "Towards Large-Area Tactile Sensing Skins: From Scalable Materials to Embodied Robotic Perception" workshop at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2026