The robots experiencing emotions are a good topic of science fiction, and a Holy Grail for researchers intelligence artificially. Mais machines equipped with a different kind of feeling, the sense of touch, may emerge soon. The results of a new study represent a significant advance in this direction. Scientists have developed a flexible artificial skin sensitive to pressure and temperature.
Last year, Takao Someya of the University of Tokyo and his team have announced that they had developed an electronic artificial skin, ‘E-skin “capable of detecting the pressure. But he lacked their establishment’s ability to feel the heat and it was not flexible enough to adapt to three-dimensional surfaces such as robot fingers. Someya’s team has now corrected these deficiencies by integrating circuits organic transistors pressure-sensitive and semi-conductor sensitive to heat in a thin plastic sheet. Continue reading →