Editing Electronic Skin to Give Robotics Human-like Touch (section)

===ELECTRONIC SKIN TO GIVE ROBOTS HUMAN-LIKE TOUCH===
10:44 16 August 2005  <br> NewScientist.com news service | Duncan Graham-Rowe and Will Knight  --  ''A flexible electronic skin that can sense when something is too hot to handle or is being squeezed too hard could give robots an almost-human sense of touch. Takao Someya and colleagues at the University of Tokyo in Japan embedded electronic sensors in a thin plastic film flexible enough to wrap around an egg. <br>  The film incorporates a matrix of transistors to measure pressure and another to sense temperature. The point at which two wires intersect in each matrix provides sensor readings, with changes in current indicating fluctuations in temperature or pressure. The two layers are fabricated separately before being overlaid, slightly offset, and laminated to form the finished e-skin.  <br> The distance between each sensor in the matrices is roughly four centimetres and sensitivity to temperature and pressure has yet to be tested thoroughly.  <br>   However, Someya says this is not his priority at the moment. "We really want to develop new technologies which make it possible to entirely cover the surface of robot bodies with e-skins," he says. <br>  <br> 

'''Six senses'''  <br> 
Max Lungarella, a robotics expert also at the University of Tokyo but unconnected with the research, is impressed with its potential. "The work is highly interesting and in my opinion highly promising," he told New Scientist. "I think that the proposed sensor can be made much smaller." <br>  Lungarella worries that, as part of a complex design, the e-skin could potentially experience electromagnetic disturbance. "In a highly integrated robotic setup such disturbances are quite common," he notes. <br> But Someya and colleagues are convinced the design can also be expanded to incorporate other types of sensor. "It will be possible in the near future to make an electronic skin that has functions that human skin lacks," the researchers write in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  <br>  They add that future e-skin could include "sensors not only for pressure and temperature, but also for light, humidity, strain and ultrasonic” sound. <br>   Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences  <br>  Future versions of the electronic skin may also be able to sense light, humidity, and ultrasound.''  -- '''[http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7849 NewScientist]'''  <br> ''[[Electronic skin to give robots human-like touch  - FULL STORY -]]''


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