Having a robot around the home can be quite handy, just ask Anakin Skywalker in his younger days. Robots in science fiction movies seem to have gotten down the difficult part down pat – we’re referring to the sense of touch as well as pressure, how does a robot know just how much pressure to apply when handling fragile items like champagne flutes and eggs, and when to tighten their grip enough to carry something heavy? Perhaps a sense of touch might help them along, thanks to the new hexagonal plate skin.
Researchers from the Technical University Munich (TUM) have managed to come up with said tiny hexagonal plates, and when they are all joined together, they will form a sensitive skin. This artificial skin is not as flexible as regular skin, since it is comprised of rigid, five-centimeter square (0.77 sq in), hexagonal circuit board plates. Individual circuit boards contain a quartet of infrared sensors which are able to detect anything that comes closer than a centimeter (0.39 in), effectively simulating light touch. Basically, it allows the robot to know when it runs into an object, where it can evaluate the situation and ponder on whether to retreat or direct its eyes to examine the object.
The plates are also embedded with six temperature sensors and an accelerometer, helping the robot develop a sense of self-perception so that it can accurately register the movement of individual limbs to learn which body parts it has moved. Robots are getting more and more lifelike by the day – are we moving close to Uncanny Valley status everywhere we look?