Soft magnetic tactile sensors have been gradually applied to robotic systems due to their low-cost and simple fabrication. The previous soft magnetic tactile sensor was developed for tactile features of a single point (i.e., force/location) estimation and proved the feasibility by experiments. However, extracting tactile features of a surface (i.e., contact shape) by magnetic sensors remains a challenge, which limits the application. In this article, a soft magnetic tactile sensor that can extract contact surface shape and pose features is fabricated, and a multipole magnetization method is developed to improve the performance of the tactile sensor.
