Taxel

The smallest individual sensing element in a tactile array — the tactile equivalent of an image pixel.

“Taxel” is a blend of “tactile” and “pixel,” referring to the smallest individually readable sensing element in a tactile array. Just as an image is made of pixels, a tactile array is made of many taxels, each measuring the pressure over the small patch of surface it covers (some also measure force along three directions). The number and spacing of taxels sets the tactile spatial resolution: closer spacing resolves finer shapes and edges, but more taxels also means more wiring, more readout circuitry, and more data. A tactile sensor is often described by how many taxels it has and how many millimeters apart they are, as a measure of its fineness. Vision-based tactile sensors have no discrete taxels, and are usually described instead by camera pixel count or the number of tracked markers.

ExampleA 16×16 fingertip tactile array has 256 taxels, each outputting one pressure value, which together form a 16×16 tactile image.

Also called

Tactile Pixel, Tactile Element

Related

Tactile Array · Tactile Image · Tactile Sensor · Electronic Skin · Piezoresistive Tactile Sensing · uSkin

Sources

Tactile Sensing—From Humans to Humanoids (Dahiya et al., IEEE T-RO 2010)