This artificial skin would give the sense of touch to robots

Researchers come to design a synthetic skin for robots. The device mimics human skin and scientists believe it can be used to give robots a sense of natural touch.

Giving the sense of touch to the robots offers several advantages, especially during a risky intervention that requires a robotic hand to defuse a bomb, for example. This is what a team of scientists has just demonstrated with artificially extensible skin.

A reproduction of the sense of touch

A team of engineers from the University of Washington and UCLA has developed an expandable skin that can cover any part of a robot. The artificial skin allows the robot to detect vibrations or any shear stress, the phenomenon that is created when you slide a finger on a flat surface. Part of the flesh under the nail swells in the opposite direction to traction while the other part stretches, according to the Engadget website. The technology works through very tiny winding channels that have been incorporated through an expandable component by the team of scientists. These channels were then filled with conductive liquid metal that transmits the electrical information to the neural network of the robot, as explained by the University of Washington.

The level of sensitivity and accuracy of artificial skin is comparable to that of natural skin, according to Jonathan Posner, director of research, who said it is "an important breakthrough" for science .