Demand for highly compliant mechanical sensors for use in the fields of robotics and\nwearable electronics has been constantly rising in recent times. Carbon based materials, and especially,\ncarbon nanotubes, have been widely studied as a candidate piezoresistive sensing medium in these\ndevices due to their favorable structural morphology. In this paper three different carbon based\nmaterials, namely carbon black, graphene nano-platelets, and multi-walled carbon nanotubes, were\nutilized as large stretch sensors capable of measuring stretches over 250%. These stretch sensors can\nbe used in robotic hands/arms to determine the angular position of joints. Analysis was also carried\nout to understand the effect of the morphologies of the carbon particles on the electro mechanical\nresponse of the sensors. Sensors with gauge factors ranging from one to 1.75 for strain up to 200%\nwere obtained. Among these sensors, the stretch sensors with carbon black/silicone composite were\nfound to have the highest gauge factor while demonstrating acceptable hysteresis in most robotic\nhand applications. The highly flexible stretch sensors demonstrated in this work show high levels of\ncompliance and conformance making them ideal candidates as sensors for soft robotics.
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