Robotic Whiskers Sense Shape and Texture

An AC writes,"NewScientistTech has a story about robotic whiskers capable of sensing shape and texture in a similar way to those belonging to rats and seals. The 'bending moment,' or torque, exerted at the base of each whisker is used to extract feature information. The artificial whiskers could be used on interplanetary rovers, or allow underwater vehicles to track moving objects by their wake. Check out the slightly creepy video of them stroking a sculpted face."

Comments

interesting point //Re:Um..Really lame video

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi, I'm one of the authors of the paper.

I think what you are suggesting is that there should be simultaneous video of (1) the whiskers sweeping over the sculpted head, and (2) the computer drawing the image generated by the whiskers. Is that what you mean by "feedback?" If so, you're right, that would be a more convincing video. However, the system doesn't yet operate in real time. Real time operation wasn't our goal. Our goal was to illustrate the basic mechanical principle (bending moment alone gives you all the info you need, even in the presence of significant slip), and to demonstrate that this principle could work for both robots and rats (and seals, underwater)

The video posted here was intended to give an intuitive impression of the size of the whiskers compared to the head, the speed of the whiskers (currently slow, but that could be changed), the extent that the whiskers "slip" when they hit the head. The fact that the whiskers slip so much makes feature extraction really difficult, especially with no force sensors.

Thus, while I understand that you're dissapointed that we didn't have real-time image extraction, I take issue with the epithet "lame" as applied to our video. ;-) Real-time extraction wasn't the point of the paper. But thanks for your comments -- always interesting to hear different perspectives.

Re:interesting point //Re:Um..Really lame video

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember that the media puts a very different spin on things than scientists and engineers might if they were presenting the work. We have virtually no control of the spin that any given website chooses to put on the article. Apparently this website has given the impression that the video is a "demonstration" of the technology. If I were presenting this video to an audience, I would not say that this was a demo, but rather that it is an illustration of how difficult the sensing problem is. Then I would explain our algorithm in some detail, describing how we overcame the obstacles exemplified in the video.

So when you say that the video has no purpose -- I think that is a result of the website not explaining the video correctly. The primary purpose of the video is to illustrate how hard the sensing problem is. How would you cope with the whiskers slipping and sliding all over the object, if you only had a sensor at the base of the whisker? It's a hard problem!

If the video is interpreted as a "demo," then it is a better demo if you look at the computer-generated image that the whiskers were able to extract. See the figure in the original article. The head on the left is the original sculpture. The image on the right is the sculpture as reconstructed by the whiskers.

You are absolutely correct that it's important to have a good paper when showing any scientific work. The peer-reviewed paper will appear in Nature tomorrow.

Artificial Skin; Animal-Like Robots?

[Garrett Fox]

These whiskers tie in with existing research into artificial skin that can "feel." This 2005 NASA article describes mecha-skin that uses IR sensors to detect touch. Japanese researchers (2005) reported having a type that senses temperature and pressure through actual touching.

The skin research should be useful both for robotics and for replacement parts for humans, as an alternative to the clunky biological hand transplants that have been carried out. (I think I'd rather have a Luke Skywalker robot hand than a mismatched corpse's!) These artificial hand researchers will probably be interested as well, because having a prosthesis that can be sensed as well as controlled is necessary for it to be as good as the original. The big issue is how easy it will be to get these touch signals into the human nervous system in a useful way. For robots, the data can be built into existing software for making maps of a robot's surroundings. I picture a robot rat running a maze with a set of these whiskers. Won't whiskers serve as a low-energy-cost alternative to sonar and other sensing systems?

The odd thing is that here, the research is not into copying human abilities, but those of (nonhuman) animals. I wrote a silly article arguing that future robots will be made to resemble animals, not humans, and Charles Van Doren (in A History of Knowledge) predicted "warm and fuzzy" robotics. Is that where we're headed?