This Color-Changing Material Could Give Robots a New Way to Detect Touch

This Color-Changing Material Could Give Robots a New Way to Detect Touch

Engineers at Queen Mary University of London have created a tactile sensor, described in a study published in Science Advances, that allows robots to detect touch using a simple camera.   The sensor converts mechanical forces into visible color patterns, reducing the need for dense arrays of embedded sensors. Giacomo Sasso, a postdoctoral researcher at Queen Mary’s School of Engineering and Materials Science, led the team that developed this new…

Amazon and University of Michigan give robots a sense of touch

From warehouse automation to surgical assistance, many real-world applications depend on robots performing delicate, contact-intensive tasks. Often missing in these situations is the sense of touch: robots need to feel the forces on their fingertips to manipulate objects effectively. Despite years of effort, robust and scalable solutions to this problem remain out of reach, especially in industrial settings. One approach has been to use vision-b…