Researchers Developing Artificial Sense of Touch for Robotics

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Scientists at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign using large arrays of simple and low-cost sensors to allow robots to detect surface textures. This would, in theory, give robots a pseudo-sense of touch, which can help with detecting how much pressure an object can handle, allowing robots to handle both more pressure-sensitive objects like eggs, and a wider array (if it can handle eggs, it can handle much less fragile objects as well.)

Each sensor resembles a little drum head about 200 microns in diameter with a tiny bump in the center,” Engel said. “On the surface of the drum head, we deposit a thin-metal strain gauge that changes resistance when stretched. Pressure on the sensor is converted into digital data that is sent to a computer and analyzed with a signal-processing algorithm.”

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