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Flexible Sensors Make Robot Skin
Roland Piquepaille writes "In recent years, lots of efforts have been made to give robots the ability to hear and see. But what about the sense of touch? Unlike us, robots don't have sensitive skin. But this is about to change. By using organic, or plastic, field-effect transistors as pressure sensors deposited on a flexible material, researchers at the University of Tokyo have created an artificial skin which will give robots the sense of touch. The prototype has a density of 16 sensors per square centimeter, far from the 1,500 of our fingertips. When this density increases and when the problem of the reliability of this kind of transistors is solved, the researchers say this artificial skin will also be used for car seats or gym carpets. Expect to see them in four or five years. More details and a picture of a robotic hand using organic transistors as pressure sensors."
More real realdoll.
*big smile*
Oh yeah
he just plaigarises other peoples content
if you add
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to your hosts file, he disappears !
I haven't read the article yet, but my first thought when I read the blurb was whether or not this would have applications for prosthetics?
One of the most difficult parts of rehabilitation for amputees, even with the most expensive and advanced prosthesis, is that the most sensitivity available nowadays is a highly generalied "touching something/not touching something" or a translation of general amounts of pressure (and thats only on the most advanced: most models have no sensors at all). If we could provide amputees with limbs that felt, albeit in a much reduced fashion, many behaviors that require positive feedback (i.e. to be able to adjust your movements based on what you feel in that limb) could become accesible for the disabled.
"Stumble before you crawl"
I saw the same picture in a Scientific American article last month.
KITT: "You know, Mike, we need to talk about how you're doing on your diet."
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
"Look at yourself, standing there, cradling the new flesh I've given you. If it means nothing to you, why protect it?"
"I... I am simply imitating the behavior of humans."
"You're becoming more human all the time. . .Now you're learning how to lie."
"My programming was not designed to process these sensations."
"Then tear the skin from your limb as you would a defective circuit...Go ahead...! We won't stop you! Do it! Don't be tempted by flesh!"
The only acceptable defense of scientific results is to say that they were the product of the Scientific Method.
Your parents hate you and want to see you suffer.
Make the inflatable dolls play audio clips when certain sensors are touched.
My parents would be so proud.
like he cribs everything else, you think he took that photo with permission to repost it on his blog for profit ?
you think he wrote the text on his site or copy and pasted it from the original article ?
Roland Piquepaille is a well know troll but the editors are too stupid to spot a form letter when they see one
This reminds me of the T-100 from the Terminator movies. I wonder how long before we really do build something like the T-100?
The following statement is false.
The previous statement is true.
Welcome to my world.
...or are they avoiding other sensitive parts that are more risque?
he just plaigarises other peoples content and sells it on his blog
but if you add
127.0.0.1 radio.weblogs.com
127.0.0.1 blogads.com
127.0.0.1 ww2.blogads.com
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127.0.0.1 www.blogads.com
to your hosts file, he and his revenue stream disappears !
So they'll save lots of money on aftershave and electric razors.
All hail our new cleanshaven robot masters.
Everybody complaining about Slashdot becoming Piquepaille's personal soapbox for plagiarisim seems to get instantly modded down. Is he a pseudonym for one of the Slashdot editors or something?
Anyway, what is the robot ability up to now?
* Has skin
* Eats flies
* Can transform into other robots
* Walks on water
It sounds like the plans are coming together nicely for overlord robots.
Not much longer until we have sex-bots
I wonder if having a harem sex-bots will be considered immoral
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Oh great, one more thing for Marvin to complain about.
I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed, and my leg hurts too.
I remember writing a term paper that began this way.
Mom: Joey! Stop bouncing around in your seat! .... Please don't stop...
Joey: But Maaa!
Back Seat:
welcome our new golden skinned robotic overlords.
Seriously, that picture kinda creeps me out.
Maybe we DID take the blue pill. You wouldn't remember anyway.
Flexible Sensors Make Robot Skin
In recent years, lots of efforts have been made to give robots the ability to hear and see. But what about the sense of touch? Unlike us, robots don't have sensitive skin. But this is about to change. By using organic, or plastic, field-effect transistors as pressure sensors deposited on a flexible material, researchers at the University of Tokyo have created an artificial skin which will give robots the sense of touch . The prototype has a density of 16 sensors per square centimeter, far from the 1,500 of our fingertips. When this density increases and when the problem of the reliability of this kind of transistors is solved, the researchers say this artificial skin will also be used for car seats or gym carpets. Expect to see them in four or five years. Read more...
Here are selected excerpts from the Technology Research News article.
Here is a picture of a robotic hand using organic transistors as pressure sensors. (Credit: Takao Someya)And what are possible applications?
And, of course, we'll see home robots able to pick an egg in the fridge.
The research work has been published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on July 6, 2004, under the title "A large-area, flexible pressure sensor matrix with organic field-effect transistors for artificial skin applications." Here is a link to the abstract .
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More details and a picture of a robotic hand using orgasmic transistors as pressure sensors.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
Huhhhh???
At SIGGRAPH this year there was a material that could measure force and direction, it was called GelForce, and it was one of the most amazing things I saw. I was on the E-Tech subcommittee, and it was in our venue; it was so fun to play with, and their demo was great!
This looks to be a bit more advanced and a lot more expensive (than GelForce), but nonetheless, there are other people who have been creating these materials with the same applications.
sensor data != Sensation
the aggregate array of sensor data can be thus analyzed,
but as comander data asks in TNG 'first contact' -- how does
one overcome the sensor-sensation gap?
regards,
j
As already mentioned, I see great things ahead for prosthetics. If this is a first shot at 16sensors/cm^2, surely it will be easy to make advances in not only materials but simple manufacturing processes that could greatly increase that.
It looks like the first in a long series of hurdles may just about be cleared.
There are also numerous industrial/scientific/sporting applications for something like this...imagine having NFL sidelines undercoated with this stuff...no more debate or bad vision angles....he was in or he was out. Or what about measuring even more precisely the impact at each discreet point on a runners feet? Or the force of a boxer's punch? Or the accuracy of a baseball bat or golf club as it comes into contact with the ball?
Cool stuff.
Haven't hered anything about it in the last 2-3 years, but Yeah, not new.
Why am I not suprised? I think as others have said...it could have many uses. Curious if the density will rise like HDD density was/is rising...
You mean, I can't dip my girlfriend in bleach???
The prototype has a density of 16 sensors per square centimeter, far from the 1,500 of our fingertips.
Most of that is redundant. I'd like to see you sense 1500 independent locations within a sq cm of your fingertips. I bet you'd have difficulty with 16. Where's that number from anyway? I wouldn't be surprised if its wrong anyway. Nerve endings, maybe, but not all of those are for touch, some are for temperature and probably other things.
Still, some of those extra pressure senstive nerve endings would be good for detecting subtle shifts of whatever is being touched, or texture, etc. But its nothing like 1500 a sq cm.
Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. (Isaac Asimov)
holyshit, the robot wants to feel my ass...wonder if they can also detect farts...
This Sig is removed due to factual inaccuracy
The pressure sensor arrays could be used in pressure carpets that distinguish family members from strangersHmm... this could be very usefull in front of a pet door! Think it can distinguish between a cat and a skunk?
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Or not. Do I need to mention the moderation system?
check out my blog, where i post comments interesting stuff related to robotics...
My post on this topic is here and below.
Flexible sensors make robot skin. This could have a number of applications. The first two I imagine are a richer interface between machines and humans and advanced manipulation.
If cheap enough, the machine can understand the precise location and posture of a human. Mentioned in the article are car seats. Imagine a bed which adjusted itself to minimize pressure points.
I should mention a project out of CMU by Chris Atkeson and Daniel Wilson, where he put only a few cheap accelerometers in the floorboard of a house. The algorithm processing these sensors could localize humans in the rooms with remarkable accuracy. The challenge then becomes sensor fusion and system integration, in using this information to boost performance of the entire system. For instance, a human tracker using vision alone would be dwarfed by such a system which had a reasonable seed guess from pressure sensors.
The second application is for rich manipulation. A robot grasping a glass must do so with enough pressure to not drop it, but also enough sensitivity to not break it. I doubt humans use significant higher reasoning in this process, unlike the advantage humans have over computer vision programs. Rather, robots could sense the weight fairly easily, but also the type of surface, and learn how brittle such a surface is.
Robo-Blogs of the world: UNITE!
"this artificial skin will also be used for car seats or gym carpets"
Car Seat: You seem to have put on a bit of weight mam.
Driver: I have not, how dare you.
Car Seat: And, if I feel correctly you... yup, oh yeah, over there, feel that... you've got some cellulite on your thighs too.
Driver: My god! I never!
Car Seat: I feel you are now tensing your buttocks madam...
I started a Masters degree on this issue in the 1980's and it's sad to see the same *wrong* approach to touch still being applied if the end use is a robotic hand/finger. At the time MIT was doing work on this, as were a few other places, all with the wrong approach. Here's the problem:
It's not the sensors or the density or how long they last or their accuracy or anything like that, even though these are real problems. The big killer problem is wiring. You get all these signals and at some point you need to get the wiring over joints that have to bend a real lot. And the more sensors you have the wires your typically going to have. Eventually you end up with bundles of wires and the simple fact is bundles of wires do not like being bent repeatedly, apart from which fingers need to be skinny to be useful and this is at odds with fat bundles of wires.
One solution however is physically simple and was presented at a National robotics conference in Australia in 1990. In summary I proposed and had made a working 2D slice of finger that used only 4 sensors. A 3D finger tip would require about 9 sensors, and by finger tip I mean measuring the major contact, magnitude and direction anywhere beyond the joint. The method was based on normal engineering and had the 4 sensors buried into a compliant skin. An external force caused a reading on all 4 strain gauges. From this small amount of data a PC worked out the magnitude, position and direction of the applied force using data collected from earlier testing. As a 2D finger slice it could successfully follow an edge when attached to a robot arm. I can scan and email the paper (this was pre net days) if any researchers want to extend this work and come up with practical robotic fingers. Email me.
Another solution is to put the smarts into the skin so only a "summary" signal needs to go back through the various joints. This couldn't be done in the 80's but could be now?
Why can't one use miniature wireless transmitters/receivers instead of wires in this case?
A mechanical hand can go for hours, baby... and be gentle too.
Now you can hold your pr0n with both hands.
No more stress on the freeway.
The possibilities are endless.
(I know, pretty sad. It's a slow day).
This is the same class of technology that Danny Hillis invented 25 years ago at the MIT AI Lab. At that time it wasn't organic transistors (just the plain 'ol inorganic kind) of course!
I can't find any specific references to it on the web, only some in passing. If I remember he used pantyhose to separate two conductive layers...
..that hand kinda looks like c3p0
You could these days. Size needs to be no more than about a 5mm cube. But you still have to get power, which at least is only 2 wires. But bear in mind you need a minimum of 5 per hand if just measuring finger tips, or 14 if measuring total finger touch. Per hand. But at least polling update would only need to be about every 10 mili-seconds so bandwidth would not be a issue. The smallest wireless transmitters I have seen used are about 15x10x3 mm though.
And using a matrix skin without local processing is still dumb, in animals the milions of "touch sensor" signals don't go back to the brain in a raw form, for good reason. We should understand why this is good and/or bad.
That robotic hand looks a lot like C3P0!
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
If it is going into car seats and gym carpets, expect to see alarm systems using this technology when it becomes available, as well. Someone breaks into a house, and it'd not only set off the alarm, but also track where the offender went. Possibly also car alarms? Who knows.
Every one of us. At some point we will have full control over inputs and outputs of our sentience. When we know just what that means, going back will feel like reincarnating as an ant.
-I am an elective eunuch.
I can only imagine it like having sight and hearing for the first time, but far greater than that.
-I am an elective eunuch.
You don't have to mention the moderation system to me. Sorry about the 'troll' rating.
much Star Trek. At best you mean tactile feedback. Touch is something you might require, say.. sentience to appreciate and we aren't there quite yet.
Quack, quack.
Actually, I'm reminded of the Suit-interface from the Book 'Starship Troopers'. It was described as a large sensor-suit that felt the pressures exereted by your human body, which then fed into the computer of the suit and produced a negative feedback---trying to relieve pressure on the sensor... and that was the mechanism for lifting your own leg and causing the suit to lift and amplify the force several times...
Woo-Hoo!! One more step towards my robo-suit!
Just a random snippet of memory from a cool book...
Sig currently under construction. Mind the gap....
It should be feasible to make integrated silicon strain gauge/amplifier/interface chips, embed them in a flexible printed circuit, and laminate them into a skin-like laminate with appropriate tough, soft, and hard layers. But the processes involved are all high-volume ones - it's hard to do this economically in small volume. And there's no market for a process that turns out big rolls of this stuff.
There's a lot of stuff in robotics that's like that. Linear motors and laser scanners both cost about 20x what they should. because the volume is tiny. Even basic servomotos and servo amps cost 5x as much as they should, based on parts cost.
It's getting better, though. More and more parts needed in robotics are becoming off the shelf. I run a DARPA Grand Challenge team, and over the last year, many of the components you need for that have become far more available.
Robot: Why?! Why was I made to feel pain?!
Why should robots have all the fun? How about clothing sensitive as skin, but maskable. Not just work gloves, but sandals, too - hell, a motorcycle suit that switches off when the accelerometer rises to impact levels.
--
make install -not war
The closest we have to a robot is the Honda robot - which still cannot handle many basic functions. AI has gradually increased, but nothing spectacular. Why has there not been more progress?
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So what now, they can fsck each other, and uhh, oh, sensitive hands and stuff, even themselves.
:D I probably shouldn't suggest anything :D
So what's the next step ?
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
If you made a "sexbot" running linux (fine, fine, any OS), you could have it start playing cheesy porn mp3s on cue!
Most of the touch sensivity is provided by hair, not the skin itself. In fact, the skinn doesn't feel anything since it's made of dead cells. What gives us the perception of feeling are the nerves beneath the skin which connect to the small hairs outside. High detailed pressure and directional sensivity (used to feel textures) is provided by hair. The remaining touch feeling is the low detailed pressure one described in this article.
We have milions of small hairs all over the skin, even on the fingertips. Try placing two fingertips close to each other in front of your eyes and you will notice that you feel them touching before they actually touch each other, this is because of the small hairs there.
This is also the reason why people have hair on top of their heads, to protect them from accidentally colliding with stuff (and to keep the heat for that matter), my hair has helped me a lot avoidiong painful collisions with solid objects above me in the dark several times.
If you ever tried to shave to the point where there was no more hair on your face (pretty easy if you do it with a shaving blade), you've probably noticed that your touch sensivity decayed a lot for a while (until hair grown bck there later).
Hey,
... a bit too much for an undergrad to ask for when proposing a project -- any idea where it'd be possible to buy a cheaper robotic hand?
I'm interested in eventually getting a robotic hand to work -- connect to segway RMP, a few webcams, and have it re-stack / retrieve my books.
Although I don't really qualify as a "researcher" (just a rising sophmore) and am unlikely to ever get the funding for such a project, I'd be really interested in reading the paper.
My email address is: gbatxr@tznvy.com (apply ROT13 on first two parts).
Thanks,
--TongKe
BTW, I've heard that the cheapest robotic arm (with five finger hand) run around $100K
Actually, researchers at Johns Hopkins developed flexible wires that can flex and stretch upto 1.5 times their own length without suffering damage. The article was in Nature back in March, but you need to have a subscription to view it now.
I don't care what you say, all I need is my Wumpabet soup.
like these ones, maybe?
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
Another solution is to put the smarts into the skin so only a "summary" signal needs to go back through the various joints.
And and each summariser may be given a new factor depending on what's most necessary to pay attention to. "Walking...Walking...Falling Over...FALLING OVER!..." Nerves are 2-way. Lots that could be done with this.
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
I was tempted. But I came through in the end- If I had destroyed the Phoenix, where would you all be now?
;)
Oh, that awful crew of NX-01. Maybe I should have blown up the Phoenix after all
Urge to post... fading... fading... RISING!... fading... fading... gone.
And why not? Cute as a button, and handy with machinery.
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
Why not put a 1000 simple sensors plus one small "aggregator" in each fingertip? Then reduce 1000 inputs down to one digital datastream on one wire. Add another aggregator in each hand to do the same for all the nearby fingertips. Repeat design pattern ad infinitum.
Human biology evolved very thin "wires" (neurons) that do a full homerun to the CPU, but we are not constrained to emulate that design.
As mentioned in this post, A number of force sensors are not going to do much good in this case (if picking up of an egg is all that is required) . If mimicking position and the biomechanics of the human arm is what is required, then all we need is the exact position information (along with velocities and accelarations) of all corresponding points. By mimicking the force position with relevant velocity and accelaration profiles for all points, theoretically the force values get replicated (force is after all a second derivative of position, given the first two force can be accurately predicted). So all that needs to be done is to set up the robotic arm, train it using a neural networks to mimick human arm positions for desired actions (success of the actions can be measured using the position/velocity/accelaration values). The key advantage to doing this is, this reduces the hard-wire requirements on the number of sensors and uses software more extensively. Get a fast processor , hook it up and u have a lot less circuits to deal with ... but the same results.
G
AFAIK, the DOD/DARPA establishment is actually working on exoskeleton technology for troopers.
s tm
see this:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1112411.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
During research over the summer with tactile perception in humanoid robotics Ive come to believe that a type of flesh substance should be made. When mounting the sensors on a flat surface which would be the metal of the robot, non useful readings were shown with plots. After a few experiments with a 'skin' material we could see a considerable change in the readings, readings that possibly could be used to identify different structures.
In humans we note that our nerves are not mounted onto or bones but more suspended in flesh, this accounts for quite a bit of how we percieve cutaneous perception.