An inductive biominetic whisker sensor is designed and experimented to imitate the exquisite environment sensing ability of animal whiskers.The sensor takes linear Hall as its sense organs and a stainless steel string

which is attached with small alnicos

as its whisker material to measure stimuli acting upon the tip of whisker.The principle and properties of whisker sensors are discussed and analyzed.Experimental results show that the sensor has favorable static and dynamic characteristics

and its output can adequately reflect the shapes

sizes and surface features of scanned objects

so it is suitable for the recognition of object profiles and surface textures

and can be applied in robot autonomous obstacle avoidance.