Soon, robots will feel pain and uncomfortable sensations (video)

Robots could soon feel pain thanks to the development of a new electronic skin that can simulate uncomfortable sensations.

The scientists behind the invention say the mechanical hand with smart skin has demonstrated a remarkable ability to learn to react to external stimuli such as a blow to the palm of the hand.

It uses a new type of processing system based on "synaptic transistors, which mimic the neural pathways of the brain in order to learn to feel pain."

Experts have been working for decades to build a touch-sensitive synthetic skin, one widely explored method that features an array of contact sensors across the surface of the electronic skin to allow it to detect when it comes into contact with an object.

But these sensors typically produce a large volume of data that can take time to be properly processed and responded to by a computer, causing delays that would reduce the skin's potential effectiveness in real-world tasks.

According to new research published in Science Robotics, a team of engineers from the University of Glasgow has now come up with a new prototype "electronic skin", believed to be a major advance in touch-sensitive robotics.

They drew inspiration from how the human peripheral nervous system interprets signals from the skin in order to eliminate the delay and energy consumption of earlier concepts.

Once human skin receives input, the peripheral nervous system begins processing it at the point of contact, reducing it to just vital information before sending it to the brain.

This reduction in sensory data allows efficient use of the communication channels needed to send data to the brain, which responds almost instantly until the body reacts appropriately.

To build a computationally efficient responsive electronic skin, like a clamp, the researchers printed a network of 168 crosslinked transistors made of zinc oxide nanowires directly onto a flexible plastic surface.

Then they attached the clip-on transistor to a skin sensor over a palm shaped like a human hand.

The sensor records a change in its electrical resistance when touched, with a light touch corresponding to a small change and a harder touch leading to a larger change.

The scientists said the inputs are designed to mimic the way sensory neurons work in the human body.

A new type of electronic skin capable of feeling 'pain' could help create a new generation of smart robots and prosthetics.

The skin was developed by @RavinderSDahiya and his @BEST_UofG group at @UofGEngineering.

Read the full story here 👉 https://t.co/EE94KiwgNH pic.twitter.com/LRlHUZzEsL

— University of Glasgow (@UofGlasgow) June 2, 2022

In e-skin prototypes, this input data will be sent to a computer for processing, where there is often a delay.

But in this design, the circuit built into the skin acts as synthetic synapses, reducing the input to a small height and speeding up the reaction process.

The development of the e-skin is the latest advance in flexible and stretchable printed surfaces from the University of Glasgow's Bending and Sensing Technologies Consortium (BEST).

Of course, the development of this new form of e-skin didn't involve inducing pain as we know it - it's simply a shorthand way of explaining the process of learning from external stimuli.

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