At the IEEE Sensors Conference 2025 in Vancouver, Felix Herbst was presented with an award for his work “3D-Printed Multiaxial Force Sensor Enabling Single-Step Sensor Integration” during the closing ceremony. A jury evaluated the presentations and posters at the four-day conference with regard to research content, clear communication, and overall impact of the presentation (More informations on the conference website).

The IEEE Sensors Conference is the flagship conference of the IEEE Sensors Community and took place for the 24th time this year. With 559 presentations in 15 technical sessions, a wide range of topics related to sensor technology were presented. Read more about our contributions in our news.

Abstract of the publication:

The commercial availability of conductive materials and multi-material printers for fused filament fabrication (FFF) has paved the way for cost-effective and customizable sensors. While several studies have demonstrated the feasibility of sensors produced by FFF, they typically require post-processing. We present a sensor design for single-step multiaxial force measurement encapsulated in regular printed FFF parts, relying exclusively on commercially available conductive and regular PLA. The sensor employs eight embedded measurement grids in four half-bridge configurations.. Reliable electrical contact at critical transitions is ensured by a design-level partitioning strategy that prescribes toolpath generation of conductive parts, thereby improving manufacturing repeatability. A 5N sensor is successfully fabricated and encapsulated without post-processing. Experimental characterization demonstrates a small linearity error of only 2.7% and clear decoupling of spatial force components using a calibration matrix obtained via ridge regression. This work enables reliable, low-cost fabrication of multiaxial sensors, offering a scalable solution for in-situ measurements.

Authors: Felix Herbst, Bastian Latsch, Edwin Peng, Sven Suppelt, Nils Demuth, Christoph Haugwitz, Mario Kupnik