New Generation Robo

Good news for all the morally challenged robot fetishists eagerly waiting for the ultimate fem-bot to be created—when they arrive in stores they will have touch sensitive skin. Scientists at the University of Tokyo have created "e-skin" that conducts electricity and can be used for covering all manner of robots. One of the project researchers told the press, "As robots enter our everyday life, they need to have sensors everywhere on their bodies like humans…"

Created by grinding carbon nanotubes with an ionic liquid the researchers say the rubberized material might even one day be used for human enhancements. That's right, not only will the early adopter robots be touch sensitive, but when humanity reaches the Borg stage our rubber skin interfaces will already be old hat.

A flexible electronic skin that can sense when something is too hot to handle or is being squeezed too hard could give robots an almost-human sense of touch. Takao Someya and colleagues at the University of Tokyo in Japan embedded electronic sensors in a thin plastic film flexible enough to wrap around an egg.

The film incorporates a matrix of transistors to measure pressure and another to sense temperature. The point at which two wires intersect in each matrix provides sensor readings, with changes in current indicating fluctuations in temperature or pressure. The two layers are fabricated separately before being overlaid, slightly offset, and laminated to form the finished e-skin.

The distance between each sensor in the matrices is roughly four centimetres and sensitivity to temperature and pressure has yet to be tested thoroughly.


Six senses

Max Lungarella, a robotics expert also at the University of Tokyo but unconnected with the research, is impressed with its potential. "The work is highly interesting and in my opinion highly promising," he told New Scientist. "I think that the proposed sensor can be made much smaller."

Lungarella worries that, as part of a complex design, the e-skin could potentially experience electromagnetic disturbance. "In a highly integrated robotic setup such disturbances are quite common," he notes.

But Someya and colleagues are convinced the design can also be expanded to incorporate other types of sensor. "It will be possible in the near future to make an electronic skin that has functions that human skin lacks," the researchers write in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

They add that future e-skin could include "sensors not only for pressure and temperature, but also for light, humidity, strain and ultrasonic” sound.