SonoSense: pMUT-Based Tactile Sensor

Description

In my lab, I helped develop a multimodal tactile sensor based on piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducers (PMUTs) for contact-rich robotic manipulation. The sensor achieves decoupled normal and shear force sensing using ultrasonic pulse-echo techniques through a soft, acoustically-matched elastomer interface, combining time-of-flight (ToF)–based normal force measurement with 0.1N resolution and two independent shear-force sensing methods: ultrasonic profile scanning of patterned elastomers and strain-induced elastomer thickness changes. The PMUT-based approach offers key advantages in miniaturization, low power consumption, robustness to electromagnetic interference, and scalability, enabling high-fidelity, multi-axis tactile feedback suitable for advanced robotic grasping and manipulation tasks. This work has been accepted for an oral presentation at IEEE MEMS 2026. I'll link the paper once it's published to the IEEE conference journal! Mentor: Megan Teng