Robots can be made made strong, robots can be made tireless, but a big problem with robots so far is that they can’t be made to have a sense of touch as humans do. The same issue challenges designers of prosthetic limbs. Imitating the motor movements of joints and muscles is one thing, but imitating human skin with all its myriad ways of detecting sensation is quite another. Now, a team at the University of California, Berkeley, has developed a pressure-sensitive electronic material from semiconductor nanowaires that they’re calling “e-skin.”
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E-Skin for Robots Could Lead to Touchy-Feely Prosthetics for Humans
Posted by: Kimberly Hill September 14, 2010 09:49 AMRobots can be made made strong, robots can be made tireless, but a big problem with robots so far is that they can’t be made to have a sense of touch as humans do. The same issue challenges designers of prosthetic limbs. Imitating the motor movements of joints and muscles is one thing, but imitating human skin with all its myriad ways of detecting sensation is quite another. Now, a team at the University of California, Berkeley, has developed a pressure-sensitive electronic material from semiconductor nanowaires that they’re calling “e-skin.”