A team of scientists might have been able to give robots the chance to ‘feel’ sensations and external stimuli. This is through a newly developed electric skin.
The skin, made of a gelatin-based material, is malleable and conducts electricity. When an electrode is connected to it, the skin is able to detect signals from connective pathways, corresponding to specific sensations. This technology allows robots to experience stimuli such as a light tap, changes in temperature, and even pain. It uses a single type of “multi-modal” sensor that is able to detect stimuli for its purpose.
These skins work by first getting physical data from sensors embedded within the “skin”, then converting them into electronic signals. However, this has faced problems. For instance, the signals from various sensors interfere with each other, or the material of the “skin” gets easily damaged due to its soft structure.
With tactile sensing being the next robotics landmark, scientists are in a race to create a model allowing robots to “feel” in a similar way to human skin.
“We’re not quite at the level where the robotic skin is as good as human skin, but we think it’s better than anything else out there at the moment,” Thomas George Thuruthel, the co-author of the study and lecturer in robotics and AI at University College London (UCL), said in a statement.
For the testing phase, the team melted a conductive gelatine-based hydrogel and sculpted it into a human hand shape. The “hand” was then fitted with various electrode configurations with an aim to find the ideal configuration for capturing data from physical interactions.
To test, the scientists put the “hand” through a range of stimuli, ranging from a simple tap with their finger, to more extreme ones such as blasting it with a heat gun and cutting it with a scalpel. Data from each stimulus and electrode configuration was noted by the scientists.
In total, the team claimed to collect over 1.7 million pieces of information from the skin’s 8,60,000-plus conductive pathways. Using this data, they created a machine learning model that recognised touch and could be integrated to a robot system.
The scientists behind this discovery have published their findings in the Science Robotics journal. As per their input, the next step could be the integration of the skin to human prosthetics, which could be improved if a sense of touch can be implemented. Another step could be its addition to the automotive sector and disaster relief, where a sense of touch could be effective.
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