Conductive Skin can give Robots Human touch
Researchers from the Cambridge and University College London developed a flexible, conductive skin
Where other ‘skins’ use multiple sensors in small areas, the new research is focusing on a creating the skin as one sensor.
From the website:
Although the robotic skin is not as sensitive as human skin, it can detect signals from over 860,000 tiny pathways in the material, enabling it to recognize different types of touch and pressure – like the tap of a finger, a hot or cold surface, damage caused by cutting or stabbing, or multiple points being touched at once – in a single material.
Physical tests in combination with Machine learning helps the robotic skin to differentiate various types of contact.
“Having different sensors for different types of touch leads to materials that are complex to make,” said lead author Dr David Hardman from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering. “We wanted to develop a solution that can detect multiple types of touch at once, but in a single material.”
“At the same time, we need something that’s cheap and durable, so that it’s suitable for widespread use,” said co-author Dr Thomas George Thuruthel from UCL.
Their solution uses one type of sensor that reacts differently to different types of touch, known as multi-modal sensing. While it’s challenging to separate out the cause of each signal, multi-modal sensing materials are easier to make and more robust … more..
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