One of the biggest problems with robots and prosthetics has been developing a feel for the outer skin layer. People normally know how something feels and how much pressure they should exert when gripping something. A team at University of California, Berkeley has come up with a new “thin flexible material that is embedded with microscopic wire semiconductors giving it the ability to ‘feel’”.
This sounds like an amazing break through when it comes to teaching robots or prosthetic limbs the way we feel things when a person picks up a softball or something as fragile as a wine glass. It gives them the ability to feel how much pressure is required. One of the examples they give it the ability for a robot to do dishes without destroying everything fragile.
I like to think more about the ability to give people with prosthetic limbs another way to connect back to the feeling sensations they used to have in the past. Imagine being able to feel again. I think for many people that ability alone is priceless, especially when you think of the feeling we all do when we touch someone we love, from holding their hands to touching their face. There is no other feeling like it.
Artificial skin developed by scientists, telegraph.co.ukResearchers Develop Touch-Sensitive 'e-Skin', Bloomberg Businessweek
Sensitive touch for 'robot skin', BBC News, Technology
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