Robotic arm now reads feeling of ‘touch’
October 17, 2013 Leave a comment
2013-10-16 16:42
Robotic arm now reads feeling of ‘touch’
By Ko Dong-hwan
American scientists have developed a robotic arm that can read tactile senses, helping people to recognize objects that they touch through the arm. Sensors attached to the arm “imitate” the pressure applied, enabling the person doing the touching to recognize the object. The arm can control the amount and timing of electric currents passing through the sensors at the moment of touching. When the sensors’ readings are sent to hundreds of electrodes planted in the person’s brain as packets of cognitive signals, the person can interpret the signals. “Making people believe as if they were feeling through their fingers by sending signals from the robotic arm sensors to electrodes planted at brain is no longer an impossible dream,” said Chicago University’s Dr. Sliman Bensmaia, who led the research. Scientists have already devised robotic arms and legs that can recognize signals that enable the limbs to “think and move.” But tactile perception capability is a major breakthrough, overcoming the challenge of sending signals in a reverse order. Dr. Bensmaia’s paper, titled “Spatial and temporal codes mediate the tactile perception of natural textures,” was posted online at the U.S. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Tuesday.
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