Robots in science fiction only have human-like skin when they’re deliberately trying to look like us so that they can take over the world. But really, if you’re a robot, you kinda want a tactile sensing organ to tell you when what you’re touching is too hot or cold. That’s why scientists are hard at work trying to create something for that.
Over at The Conversation, Dr. Ravinder Dahiya from the University of Glasgow believes that electronic skin is an important and necessary part of future robotic development — not just as a way to improve the robots themselves, but as a way to restore sensory feelings to humans who require prosthetics. And he’s in a pretty good position to make it happen: earlier this month, his team received funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council in the UK to continue developing a sensor-equipped “ultra-flexible tactile” skin that’s thinner than your average aluminum foil. He writes:
If your robot is going to help you around the house or with medical care, tactile sensing will be a fundamental part of its safe operation. It needs to be able to detect when a surface is slippery as well as sense the shape, texture and temperature of the objects it grasps. If it can sense the properties of that object, the robot can also decide how much force it should apply when it holds it.
In addition to Dahiya’s team, there’s also Roboskin, a European consortium that seeks to “improve the ability of robots to act efficiently and safely during tasks involving human-robot interaction,” and has worked on a number of different projects since its inception in 2009. One of these projects includes iCub, who was fitted with a rudimentary tactile-sensing network back in 2011.
It’ll be a while before we’re able to fully replicate all the different jobs that actual human skin can do, but Dahiya is confident that such technology would be completely groundbreaking. Just as long as we eventually fit iCub with some eyebrows or something, guys. Those are just as important as skin, in that not having either of them makes you look creepy as heck.
(via Phys.org, image via FOX)
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