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Sensitive robot skin has a memory and knows what it has touched
Fishing keys from the bottom of a bag or picking up soft fruit are pretty basic tasks for us humans. But they’re not so easy for robotic hands. Recognising and grasping different objects usually requires complex programming and processing power.
Xiaodong Chen at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and his colleagues have developed flexible skin-inspired touch sensors that store tactile information. The sensors work like our haptic memory, which can store impressions of touch sensations in the brain after the stimulus has stopped.
Chen says the sensors could store information to help robots recognise their environment and moderate their grip strength to pick up different things, and to be delicate to avoid damaging things like fruit. This frees the robot’s main processors for other tasks. What’s more, he reckons they could provide robots with personalised secure activation, such as a handshake from a particular person.
Sensing change
The sensors comprise a pressure-sensitive layer that detects changes in electrical resistance when force is applied. Beneath this layer is a thin-film memory device that records these changes to form a digital impression of any pressure. The researchers showed the sensors can retain such information for about a week, though data can also be erased by applying a voltage.
Not everyone is convinced that giving memory to artificial skin is useful. “The need for such memory in robotic and prosthetic applications is not clear,” says Jonathan Rossiter, a roboticist at the University of Bristol, UK. “Typically, one wants to have information about a touch event as quickly as possible. Having an embedded record of touch isn’t so immediately useful.”
Siegfried Bauer at the Johannes Kepler University Linz in Austria thinks this approach has potential. “It may be interesting when gripping complex-shaped objects to know the forces exerted on them,” he says. “Imagine gripping soft objects, such as strawberries: here it is essential to know the contact forces of a robotic gripper.”
Without this tactile memory, our future robot chefs are going to squash a lot of fruit.
Journal reference: Advanced Materials, DOI: 10.1002/adma.201504754
Image credit: Benny J. Johnson/Getty
Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28773-sensitive-robot-skin-has-a-memory-and-knows-what-it-has-touched/
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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