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MDPI Machines Special Issue: Flexible Tactile Sensor Array: Trends and Applications
Paper Submission Deadline: 29 February 2024
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/machines/special_issues/JUT48OQ3J2
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**Aims and Scope**
Dear Colleagues,

Over the past decades, research on flexible tactile sensor arrays has attracted increasing interest in various fields of application, including robotics, medical devices, haptic devices and wearables, extended reality, and IoT, just to name a few. Given the growing demand for increasingly complex and specific tasks such as object shape identification, materials properties estimation, surface texture recognition, and grasp stability detection, it became necessary to use increasingly advanced manufacturing methods and materials to develop touch sensors with certain characteristics such as high resolution, mechanical flexibility and adaptability, and implementation of multimodal and multifunctional sensing. Moreover, despite the market presence of some types of flexible tactile sensor arrays, their uptake in commercial applications is still extremely low compared to other sensing modalities. For this reason, we can consider the current flexible tactile sensor array to be still in its infancy.

Going beyond the state of the art, tactile sensor arrays still face enormous challenges considering their practical applications, in terms of:

Performance: improving performance in terms of sensitivity, resolution, hysteresis, repeatability, multimodality, and cross-talk;
Hardware: improving physical arrangement, modularity, and robustness for implementation in different types of applications, from autonomous robotics to teleoperated systems, from industrial to medical use;
Economic sustainability: by optimizing the fabrication process and reducing power consumption;
Data processing: taking advantage of the recent impact of AI hardware and software (edge computing, quantum computing, parallel computing (neuromorphic), FPGA) to deeply explore and decode the information embedded in the tactile acquisition signals.

**Topics of Interest**
In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research topics may include (but are not limited to) the following:

* multimodal and multidimensional tactile sensing;
* novel structural and sensing materials;
* advanced manufacturing technologies;
* flexible, conformable, and stretchable tactile sensors and arrays;
* tactile data processing and interpretation of tactile sensing in industrial robots, humanoids and
teleoperated systems;
* tactile sensing in haptic devices and wearable devices and IoT; and
* tactile sensing in prosthetics and medical devices.

**Submission Guidelines**
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Machines is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

**Special Issue Editors**
Jorge Cabral, Minho University
Edoardo Sotgiu, Minho University/INL