Over the past decade, research into bionic prostheses has led to the development of prosthetic systems that reproduce sensations such as pressure or heat. However, human sensations encompass a much wider range of stimuli, including pain. A team of researchers has thus developed an electronic skin that could allow wearers of prostheses, as well as robots, to feel many more tactile stimuli and experience pain.
Prosthetic technology has made tremendous progress over the past decade, but accurately simulating sensations similar to those experienced daily is a difficult task. New 'electronic skin' technology being developed at the Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST) could help replicate sensations of 'pain' and enable robots to understand tactile reactions, such as stinging sensation or warmth on the skin.
Trying to recreate the human senses has been a powerful motivator for researchers. The imitation of tactile processes has been the focus of several research groups in recent years, but the progress made has mainly improved the feeling of pressure and force of the prostheses. Human sensations, however, can detect much more subtle signals.
The DGIST researchers, led by Professor Jae Eun Jang of the Department of Information and Communication Engineering, needed to bring together experts from different fields to begin the arduous task of reproducing these more complex sensations in their prototype of electronic skin, working with colleagues from Robotics and Brain of the DGIST. The prototype is described in the journal Soft Robotics .
“We have developed core technology that can effectively detect pain, which is needed to develop a future touch sensor. As an achievement of convergence research by experts in nanotechnology, electronic engineering, robotics engineering and brain science, it will be widely used to develop electronic skin that feels different senses as well as novel human-computer interactions explains Jang.
The DGIST team's effort resulted in more efficient sensor technology that can detect pressure and heat simultaneously. They also developed a signal processing system that adjusts pain responses based on pressure, area, and temperature.
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The electronic skin also required advances in materials science:the technology is based on a zinc oxide nanowire. This nanowire has two particular physical properties that make it effective in reproducing human sensation:
“If robots can also feel pain, our research will go further into the field of technology to control the aggressive tendency of robots, which is one of the risk factors for the development of AI explains Jang. Robots that can sense pain remain a futuristic concept, but Jang's work shows that advances in real-world robotics are catching up with science fiction.
