Abstract

Endowing robots with human-like perception and thinking to match thegrowing intelligentization remains a challenge. Here, an MXene andpolyacrylonitrile (PAN) based carbon fiber enhanced bimodal triboelectricsensor (MPBS) is proposed to integrate with a commercial robotic arm,establishing a novel paradigm for perception and control. The touchless andtactile perception performance are further improved by a functional layerdoped with MXene nanosheets and electrodes composed of PAN-basedcarbon fibers. With 2 wt.% MXene, the MPBS electrical output increases by100%, achieving a touchless sensing range of 200 cm and a peak output ratioof 3.65 V cm -2. Integrating MPBSs into flexible fingers, a soft gripper withbimodal perception capabilities is developed. The touchless signals providevaluable insights into material composition, whereas the tactile mode enablesprecise shape recognition with an accuracy of 99.4%. The further integratedrobotic arm utilizes touchless sensing to autonomously explore objects andrun control actions when unexpected events occur. 10 types of objectmaterials and shapes are identified with 98.7% accuracy using a convolutionalneural network (CNN) that fuses touchless and tactile data. Demonstration ofmultitask applications, through the Al-enabled robotic arm system, issuccessfully created for object detection, intelligent sorting, and pipelineinspection.