Cyber Punk
Combing a news story on artificial skin with the film, iRobot.
http://www.news.com.au/technology/robotics-breakthrough-scientists-make-artificial-skin/story-e6frfro0-1225920548036
Scientists make artificial skin that can feel touch
By Richard Ingham in Paris From: AFP September 13, 2010 10:02AM----------------------------------------------------
BIOTECH wizards have engineered electronic skin that can sense touch in a major step towards next-generation robotics and prosthetic limbs. This advancement will progress the already rising commercial success of U.S. Robotics (USR). The highly anticipated new NS-5 robots being developed by USR will incorporate this new technology.
Important hurdles remain but the exploit is an advance towards replacing today's clumsy robots and artificial limbs with smarter, touch-sensitive upgrades, they believe. The lab-tested material responds to almost the same pressures as human skin and with the same speed, they said in the British journal Nature Materials.
"Humans generally know how to hold a fragile egg without breaking it," said Ali Javey, an associate professor of computer sciences at the University of California at Berkeley, who led one of the research teams. "If we ever wanted a robot that could unload the dishes, for instance, we'd want to make sure it doesn't break the wine glasses in the process. But we'd also want the robot to grip the stock pot without dropping it."
If this is the case, the advancement from the current robots on offer from USR would be radical. Current robots available for purchase act simply as babysitters, house sitters and skill lacking housekeepers. This new advancement of human like skin would be a much awaited advancement that, when applied, will be a commercial success.
A different approach was taken by a team led by Zhenan Bao, a Chinese-born associate professor at Stanford University in California. Professor Bao's team's approach was to use a rubber film that changes thickness due to pressure and employs capacitors, integrated into the material, to measure the difference. It cannot be stretched, though. "Our response time is comparable with human skin, it's very, very fast, within milliseconds, or thousandths of a second," Professor Bao said. "That means in real terms that we can feel the pressure instantaneously."
In our already advanced society, the mass public has been waiting long enough for competent and reliable robots for everyday use and practicality.
In the search to substitute the human senses with electronics, good substitutes now exist for sight and sound, but lag for smell and taste. Touch, though, is widely acknowledged to be the biggest obstacle. But hopefully not for long with USR's efforts of combining robotics with reality.
Even routine daily actions, such as brushing one's teeth, turning the pages of a newspaper or dressing a small child would easily defeat today's robots.
Professor Bao added important caveats about the challenges ahead.
One is about improving the new sensors. They respond to constant pressure, whereas in human skin more complex sensations are possible.
This is because the pressure-sensing cells in the skin can send different frequencies of signal — for instance, when we feel something painful or sharp, the frequency increases, alerting us to the threat. After much discussion, we have decided not to include a sense of pain to the upcoming NS-5 robots. Robots which feel pain are impractical. We are not trying to create sub-humans, just purely robotic machines."
In the near future, artificial skin will be studded with sensors that respond to chemicals, biological agents, temperature, humidity, radioactivity or pollutants.
"This would be especially useful in applications where we want to send robots into environments, including space, where it could be dangerous for humans to go," said Professor Bao.
"They could collect information and send it back."
In the search to substitute the human senses with electronics, good substitutes now exist for sight and sound, but lag for smell and taste. Touch, though, is widely acknowledged to be the biggest obstacle. But hopefully not for long with USR's efforts of combining robotics with reality.
Even routine daily actions, such as brushing one's teeth, turning the pages of a newspaper or dressing a small child would easily defeat today's robots.
Professor Bao added important caveats about the challenges ahead.
One is about improving the new sensors. They respond to constant pressure, whereas in human skin more complex sensations are possible.
This is because the pressure-sensing cells in the skin can send different frequencies of signal — for instance, when we feel something painful or sharp, the frequency increases, alerting us to the threat. After much discussion, we have decided not to include a sense of pain to the upcoming NS-5 robots. Robots which feel pain are impractical. We are not trying to create sub-humans, just purely robotic machines."
In the near future, artificial skin will be studded with sensors that respond to chemicals, biological agents, temperature, humidity, radioactivity or pollutants.
"This would be especially useful in applications where we want to send robots into environments, including space, where it could be dangerous for humans to go," said Professor Bao.
"They could collect information and send it back."
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