A robot that has a skin feel and can gently hug people has appeared
A research group at the Technical University of Munich has developed a robot `` H-1 '' that has more than 13,000 sensors in the whole body and can feel not only the touch and temperature but also something near the body. did. As a result, it is expected that care robots with high safety will appear.
A Comprehensive Realization of Robot Skin: Sensors, Sensing, Control, and Applications-IEEE Journals & Magazine
Sensitive robots are safer-TUM
https://www.tum.de/nc/en/about-tum/news/press-releases/details/35732
Biologically-inspired skin improves robots' sensory abilities
https://techxplore.com/news/2019-10-biologically-inspired-skin-robots-sensory-abilities.html
Looking at the following movie, you can see how the robot “H-1” that can feel something with the same mechanism as human skin is actually operating.
Sensitive Skin for Robots-YouTube
Until now, robots that tried to reproduce human skin with pressure sensors etc. have appeared, but the problem that `` conventional robots have a limit of processing capacity with several hundred sensors '' was. For this reason, it was impossible to reproduce the “feel” of human skin with five million receptors on the skin.
On the other hand, 1260 cells equipped with sensors that sense temperature, pressure, acceleration, and the approach of an object are arranged in the whole body of H-1, and a total of more than 13,000 sensors provide a human-like sensation It is possible.
The reason why H-1 has succeeded in having an artificial skin with an extremely large number of sensors is that it introduced a new approach called “event-driven system”.
Conventional robots have processed all sensor information. On the other hand, H-1 treats only “new touch” as a new event. Thanks to this, we succeeded in saving up to 90% of the processing power in the same process as “When a person wears a shirt, the skin gets used to forget the feel of the shirt”.
Ordinary sensors are delicate and will be destroyed when subjected to strong impacts and loads. However, the artificial skin of H-1 is strong and durable enough to be placed on the sole of the foot, so it is possible to capture and balance the feel of the ground.
Thanks to the sensor throughout the body, you can also gently hug people.
As a result, it is expected to realize a robot that can safely perform operations such as “assisting movements in close contact with the human body” required for nursing care.
Professor Gordon Chen, who led the research and development, said, “In the future, we will work on the development of a cell that is smaller and capable of mass production,” and is eager to develop a robot that feels more like human skin. It was.
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