Asia Bizz: In a huge technological advance in recent times, scientists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in Germany are reportedly in the process of developing a skin for robots, which would be similar to the human skin. Normally a human skin has the ability to sense the finest breaths, touch and pain, but this ‘new’ skin is expected to be come equipped with these qualities. The scientists call this new invention synthetic skin and it would help the robot with tactile information.
The synthetic skin will be used as an aid to the camera eyes of the robot, as well as the infrared scanner and the gripping hands. As the human brain responds to the touch of the skin, the synthetic skin too will help the robot to recognize a touch and use its eyes to search for a new contact. Such a feature would be useful for the helper robots of the people who travel often.
For a robot, the vision of an apartment includes where the people and pets are moving around. Philip Mittendorfer, the scientist at TUM, said that in contrast to the tactile information, the sense of sight can be limited as the object can be hidden. The new skin has five square cm hexagonal plate or a circuit board, where each small circuit contains four infrared censors.
