E-skin that can feel pain could create new generation of touch-sensitive robots

An electronic skin which can learn from feeling 'pain' could help create a new generation of smart robots with human-like sensitivity. A team of engineers from the University of Glasgow developed the artificial skin with a new type of processing system based on 'synaptic transistors, which mimics the brain's neural pathways in order to learn. A robot hand which uses the smart skin shows a remarkable ability to learn to react to external stimuli. In a new paper published today Robotics, the researchers describe how they built their prototype computational electronic-skin (e-skin), and how it improves on the current state of the art in touch-sensitive robotics. https://youtu.be/QP1nd6jq4L8 Scientists have been working for decades to build artificial skin with touch sensitivity. One widely-explored method is spreading an array of contact or pressure sensors across the electronic skin's surface to allow it detect when it comes into contact with an object. Data from the sensors is then sent to a computer to be processed and interpreted.