Slashdot Mirror
Robotic Sense of Touch
Aryabhata writes "As per a BBC article, US scientists have created a device that could one day pave the way for robotic hands mimicking human touch. The research team from University of Nebraska in Lincoln hopes to apply this to aid surgery by allowing surgeons to feel the tissue they are operating on. This could help surgeons in distinguishing cancerous or abnormal tissue etc. To demonstrate the device the scientists tried the instrument on a one cent coin and the sensor revealed the wrinkles in President Lincoln's clothing and the letters TY in liberty."
one step closer to our desired sex slavebots!
This is more of a remote control application of sensors. It lets you feel through the robotic hands.
In other words, it won't do anything for a sexbot, but the implications for the phone sex industry are profound!
I get why this would be useful for telesurgery. But does anyone else thing this would be damn useful for robots more generally?
AI is the single largest problem with making robots that act autonomously, but there are other issues as well, and sensory data is one of them. Humans, and other animals, depend on a variety of senses to interact with our environment - ranging from sonar to sight to smell (depending on species). An individual is severly limited with one of their senses lost/reduced.
We could build a robot with sight easily - camera technology is getting better and better. Ditto sound recording, and even interpretation (voice recognition for example has come a long way). Gyroscopes can be used to give a sense of balance. It wouldn't be that difficult to add sonar or radar to that list, and smell we can probably skip for most applications. But touch is too useful not to have. For any device that moves independantly, being able to feel where it's putting its various body parts is potentially vital.
How important is our sense of touch? Hands are useless without feedback as to where we're putting them. Imagine the advantages for a robot that can feel different surfaces (and determine what they're made of, how sturdy they are, etc). I suspect a fair number of problems with pathfinding could be solved by giving the robot instructions as to what surfaces will and won't support it's weight. Telling a vehicle sized robot to stick to the asphalt would be helpful, especially when you consider the alternatives. It'd be nice to be able to tell a bot meant for cleaning not to throw away money, or to differentiate between recycleable materials and regular garbage, or to avoid scrubbing the carpet with tile cleaner...
Of course I'm probably getting ahead of the technology here - this sort of application won't exist for a long time yet. But hey, a geek can dream.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Since this appears to be the official joke thread for the article, I'll throw in my two cents:
the sensor revealed the wrinkles in President Lincoln's clothing and the letters TY in liberty.
I'm glad they've got a device that can still detect some of our liberty. I was starting to get worried.
--MarkusQ
What about prosthetics that could actually feel? If I lost an arm or a leg or something, I'd pay top dollar not to lose my sense of touch.
I make websites and stuff. Buy one.
One cent coin? Isn't it easier to just say "a penny"?
Because "pain" protects you from yourself damaging your body
If you can't feel there's something wrong and abnormal with your body (broken leg, biting on tongue, finger stuck in a blender, ...) you wont act to protect it. Not damaging yourself wouldn't be a "reflex" anymore, but a contious process with not always the highest priority. Like an Interrupt request versus an API-call.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
sure, surgery and cancer and stuff...but what about the blackjack and hookers?
"the wrinkles in President Lincoln's clothing"
It's too bad the mint couldn't have ironed his clothes before casting him in metal...
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
I have a friend working on this tech and they are getting close. Its a really hard thing to do because for large scale force feed back the mechanics are too big and complex to be easily mass produced. Then with the small scale (textures, etc) its hard interface the controls with the human hand and transmit such small changes in surface quickly enough to be useful.
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
This might have some use to amputees. I heard a while ago that they were developing prosthetics with a sense of touch, but all they could do was distinguish between hot and cold.