Abstract: A capacitive force sensor is provided that includes a first support layer and a second support layer, a dielectric layer disposed between the first support layer and the second support layer, where the dielectric layer is a non-conductive elastomer that is incompressible in the a normal direction and deflects in a shear direction, a layer of parallel conductive traces disposed between and bonded to the dielectric layer and the first support layer, and a conductive layer of parallel shear channel traces having at least two distinct channels disposed between and bonded to the dielectric layer and the second support layer, where the parallel conductive traces and the parallel shear channel traces are locally parallel to each other and provide capacitive shear force measurement sensitivity while rejecting normal forces, where the normal force measurement is decoupled from the shear force measurement.

Abstract: A rotary position sensor is provided that includes a sensing disc having an N-fold rotation symmetry and capacitive sensing pads arranged in an array pattern, where the array pattern has at least 4N-fold rotation symmetry, where N?2, a scale disc disposed opposite the sensing disc, where the scale disc includes a pattern of conductive pads that have a sinusoidal-shape, where the pattern of sinusoidal-shaped conductive pads produce four sinusoidal capacitance waveforms in quadrature phase with the capacitive sensing pads as the sensing disc and the scale disc are rotated relative to one another to provide angular position information. to provide angular position information. This is achieved by making the overlapping area of the of the capacitive sensing pads change in a sinusoidal fashion with rotation.