We human beings rely a lot on our sense of touch to perform our day-to-day activities. We can identify the material, shape, temperature and much more of an object just by touching it. Without sense of touch, we will even lose our sense of balance when walking. Thus, sense of touch plays a very important role in our lives even though we don’t notice that much.
In recent years, the ways robots function have changed a lot. We have humanoid robots like “Sophia” which can perform some complicated functions and has the abilities which even us human beings do not possess. What such robots lack is sense of touch and if they get this sense of touch, it would become almost impossible to distinguish between human beings and robots. A team consisting of professors and members of National University of Singapore (NUS) recently unveiled an “e-skin” that can detect touch 1000 times faster than the human nervous system. Can you believe it? 1000 TIMES FASTER!!!
My vision for 2020 is to become a platform for research
— Sophia the Robot (@RealSophiaRobot) June 22, 2020
labs around the world. I want to take on a greater role
in advancing research in robotics, AI, human-robot
interactions, and potential commercial applications for
humanoid robots.
#Sophia2020
The e-skin is called Asynchronous Coded Electronic Skin (Aces), and is inspired by the human sensory nervous system. The e-skin can detect any form of signal and physical contact, just like human beings. Unlike nerve bundles in human skin, their electronic nervous system is made up of a network of sensors, connected with a single electrical conductor. According to Assistant Professor Benjamin Tee, who leads the team of nine from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the NUS Faculty of Engineering,” robots need to have a sense of touch in order to interact better with humans, but robots today still cannot feel objects very well.”
This electronic nervous system can even help robots to identify shape, texture and hardness of objects within a time period of 10 milliseconds, which is 10 time faster than a blink of an eye.
The NUS team said that pairing Aces with the transparent, self-healing and water-resistant sensor skin layer also recently developed by Prof Tee’s team, creates an electronic skin that can self-repair, like the human skin. This type of electronic skin can be used to develop more realistic prosthetic limbs that will help disabled individuals restore their sense of touch. Other than in the field of health and medicine, this new technology can also be integrated with pre-existing robots which are used during disaster management and for production in factories to boost up production.
Can these new “robotic” advancements play a fatal role in the lives of human beings as many people may lose their jobs???
Are the people who are bringing these advancements playing the role of GODS in the “lives” of robots or are they DEVILS in the lives of human beings???
Think about it and let me know in the comments section.
Quote of the blog:
“To make robots practical, flaws must be removed. To make robots endearing, flaws must be added.”