| PhD Viva

Name of the Speaker: Ms. Debasrita Kar (EE18D419)
Guide: Dr. Boby George
Co-Guide: Dr. Sridharan K
Online meeting link: http://meet.google.com/rjg-qaxc-eqa
Date/Time: 15th October 2025 (Wednesday), 3 PM
Title: Design and Development of Flexible Inductive Bend Angle Sensors for Soft Robotic Applications

Abstract :

Soft robotic grippers offer higher degree of flexibility and deformability to grasps different types of objects with ease. In comparison to the conventional rigid robotic grippers they provide a safer interactive environment while handling fragile objects. The actuation of these soft robotic grippers, necessitates the integration of flexible bend sensors to discern and quantify the degree of deformation within the soft robotic structure to aid closed loop control. This thesis focuses on the design and development of advanced bend angle sensors addressing the need for precise and reliable measurements of bending in soft robotic fingers and grippers. Inductive type sensors show promising performance in general such as negligible hysteresis error, good repeatability and better tolerance to variation in the output due to changes in temperature, dust, humidity etc. A novel flexible planar coil-based inductive bend sensor is first presented to measure the cumulative bend angle of soft robotic fingers. An improved design based on a meander topology is also developed. In case of grasping different shapes of objects, the soft robotic gripper undergoes obstructive bending. Depending on the shape of the object, each segment of a soft gripper bends differently. To accommodate segment-wise bending during grasping, a magnetic coupling based segmented bend angle sensor is also developed.Finally, the thesis considers the problem of predicting bend angles. A regression network is developed for this task that uses ultrasonic and bend sensor data.