Human touch for a robot
The robot arm detects a ripe tomato by touch
Dmitry Ryder, XX2 century
Scientists from the Organic Robotics Lab at Cornell University have developed a robotic arm that has a sensitivity level close to human – it is sensitive enough to determine the shape, softness and overall texture of the object it touches.
The robot arm is capable of different types of contact with objects.
The silicone arm, developed by a team of roboticists led by Robert Shepherd, associate professor of mechanical engineering technology at Cornell University, is filled with optical fibers that can be used to determine how light passes through the arm, changing as it moves and contacts other objects.
The video shows how the robot, among other things, selects the ripest of the three tomatoes by simply touching them.
The difference between this new robot arm and other sensitive robots is that its sensors are not on the surface of the fingers, but inside them. As a rule, robots that can recognize what they are touching need objects that conduct electricity to recognize – they recognize this electricity and so try to understand what they are touching.
"If there was no loss of light when bending the arm ("prosthesis"), we would not receive information about the sensor's condition," Shepard told the Cornell Chronicle. "The amount of loss depends on how it bends."
The researchers believe that this technology could activate a prosthetic arm that restores people's sense of touch, or could provide robots with a more accurate and sensitive way of physical contact.
Huichan Zhao, a doctoral student at Cornell University and lead author of a study on a soft robotic arm published in the journal Science Robotics this month, told NPR that a soft robotic arm developed by her team can be made for as little as $50.
But, as in the case of other soft robotics projects, the hand from the Cornell University laboratory needs to be filled with compressed air so that the fingers inflate, bend and retain their shape. But for now, air pumps are usually too large for a person to carry comfortably.
Article by Zhao et al. Optoelectronically innervated soft prosthetic hand via stretchable optical waveguides is published in the journal Science Robotics; the press release of New robot has a human touch can be read on the website of Cornell University – VM.
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20.12.2016