Skill transfer from humans to robots is challenging. Presently, many
researchers focus on capturing only position or joint angle data from humans to
teach the robots. Even though this approach has yielded impressive results for
grasping applications, reconstructing motion for object handling or fine
manipulation from a human hand to a robot hand has been sparsely explored.
Humans use tactile feedback to adjust their motion to various objects, but
capturing and reproducing the applied forces is an open research question. In
this paper we introduce a wearable fingertip tactile sensor, which captures the
distributed 3-axis force vectors on the fingertip. The fingertip tactile sensor
is interchangeable between the human hand and the robot hand, meaning that it
can also be assembled to fit on a robot hand such as the Allegro hand. This
paper presents the structural aspects of the sensor as well as the methodology
and approach used to design, manufacture, and calibrate the sensor. The sensor
is able to measure forces accurately with a mean absolute error of 0.21, 0.16,
and 0.44 Newtons in X, Y, and Z directions, respectively