Intelligent robots with human sensitivity. No, it’s not a plot for an upcoming sci-fi movie, it’s a new Glasgow investigation. Electronic skin capable of feeling pain. Wow!
A team of engineers at the University of Glasgow developed electronic skin with a new type of “synaptic transistor” processing system that mimics the brain’s neural pathways for learning.
The potential? An electronic skin that can learn to feel “pain” could help create a new generation of intelligent robots. Those with a similar sensitivity to humans.
“We all learn at the beginning of our lives how to respond appropriately to unexpected stimuli like pain to keep us from getting hurt again,” said Professor Ravinder Dahiya of the James Watt School of Engineering at the University.
“Of course, the development of this new form of electronic skin did not really involve inflicting pain as we know it. It is simply a shorthand way of explaining the learning process from external stimuli.”
The electronic skin of the computer is capable of “distributed learning” at the hardware level. One that does not need to send back and forth messages to a central processor before acting.
Instead, it greatly speeds up the touch response process by reducing the amount of calculation required.
“We believe this is a real step forward in our work to create a large-scale neuromorphic printed electronic skin capable of responding appropriately to stimuli,” Dahaiya added.
So how did they approach electronic skin?
Scientists have been working for decades to build artificial skin with tactile sensitivity. A widely explored method is to spread a series of contact or pressure sensors over the surface of the electronic skin. This allows it to detect when it comes in contact with an object. You know, like the touch.
The sensor data is then sent to a computer to be processed and interpreted. Sensors typically produce a large amount of data that can take a long time to process. This introduces delays in the “reaction”. As if you were stepping on it 30 seconds after a needle pricked you. The method used by the researchers further mimics our “normal” response. As soon as the human skin receives an input, the peripheral nervous system begins to process it. Then a reaction is noticed immediately.
To build an electronic skin, the researchers printed out a grid of 168 synaptic transistors. They were made of zinc oxide nanowires on a flexible plastic surface. They then connected the synaptic transistor to the skin sensor present in the palm of a human-shaped robot hand.
When the sensor is touched, it records a change in its electrical resistance. A small change corresponds to a light touch, and a harder touch creates a larger change in resistance. This mimics the way sensory neurons work in the human body.
“In the future, this research could be the basis for more advanced electronic skin that allows robots capable of exploring and interacting with the world in new ways. Or building prosthetic limbs that are capable of near-human levels of tactile sensitivity.” added Fengyuan Liu, a member of the BEST group and co-author of the paper.
You can read more about electronic skin here.