New E-Skin Innovation
Gives Robots and Prosthetics an Exceptional Sense of Touch
Unique sensor system
responds 1,000 times faster than the human
sense of touch, the
fastest ever achieved for an e-skin
From the National University of Singapore
July 18, 2019 --Robots and prosthetic devices
may soon have a sense of touch equivalent to, or better than, the human skin
with the Asynchronous Coded Electronic Skin (ACES), an artificial nervous
system developed by a team of researchers at the National University of
Singapore (NUS).
The new electronic skin system achieved
ultra-high responsiveness and robustness to damage, and can be paired with any
kind of sensor skin layers to function effectively as an electronic skin.
The innovation, achieved by Assistant Professor
Benjamin Tee and his team from the Department of Materials Science and
Engineering at the NUS Faculty of Engineering, was first reported in
prestigious scientific journal Science Robotics on 18 July 2019.
Faster than the human sensory nervous system
"Humans use our sense of touch to
accomplish almost every daily task, such as picking up a cup of coffee or
making a handshake. Without it, we will even lose our sense of balance when
walking. Similarly, robots need to have a sense of touch in order to interact
better with humans, but robots today still cannot feel objects very well,"
explained Asst Prof Tee, who has been working on electronic skin technologies
for over a decade in hope of giving robots and prosthetic devices a better
sense of touch.
Drawing inspiration from the human sensory
nervous system, the NUS team spent a year and a half developing a sensor system
that could potentially perform better. While the ACES electronic nervous system
detects signals like the human sensor nervous system, it is made up of a
network of sensors connected via a single electrical conductor, unlike the
nerve bundles in the human skin. It is also unlike existing electronic skins
which have interlinked wiring systems that can make them sensitive to damage
and difficult to scale up.
Elaborating on the inspiration, Asst Prof Tee,
who also holds appointments in the NUS Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, NUS Institute for Health Innovation & Technology
(iHealthTech), N.1 Institute for Health and the Hybrid Integrated Flexible
Electronic Systems (HiFES) programme, said, "The human sensory nervous
system is extremely efficient, and it works all the time to the extent that we
often take it for granted. It is also very robust to damage. Our sense of
touch, for example, does not get affected when we suffer a cut. If we can mimic
how our biological system works and make it even better, we can bring about
tremendous advancements in the field of robotics where electronic skins are
predominantly applied."
ACES can detect touches more than 1,000 times
faster than the human sensory nervous system. For example, it is capable of
differentiating physical contacts between different sensors in less than 60
nanoseconds -- the fastest ever achieved for an electronic skin technology --
even with large numbers of sensors. ACES-enabled skin can also accurately
identify the shape, texture and hardness of objects within 10 milliseconds, ten
times faster than the blinking of an eye. This is enabled by the high fidelity
and capture speed of the ACES system.
The ACES platform can also be designed to
achieve high robustness to physical damage, an important property for
electronic skins because they come into the frequent physical contact with the
environment. Unlike the current system used to interconnect sensors in existing
electronic skins, all the sensors in ACES can be connected to a common
electrical conductor with each sensor operating independently. This allows
ACES-enabled electronic skins to continue functioning as long as there is one
connection between the sensor and the conductor, making them less vulnerable to
damage.
Smart electronic skins for robots and
prosthetics
ACES' simple wiring system and remarkable
responsiveness even with increasing numbers of sensors are key characteristics
that will facilitate the scale-up of intelligent electronic skins for
Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications in robots, prosthetic devices and
other human machine interfaces.
"Scalability is a critical consideration
as big pieces of high performing electronic skins are required to cover the
relatively large surface areas of robots and prosthetic devices,"
explained Asst Prof Tee. "ACES can be easily paired with any kind of
sensor skin layers, for example, those designed to sense temperatures and
humidity, to create high performance ACES-enabled electronic skin with an
exceptional sense of touch that can be used for a wide range of purposes,"
he added.
For instance, pairing ACES with the
transparent, self-healing and water-resistant sensor skin layer also recently
developed by Asst Prof Tee's team, creates an electronic skin that can
self-repair, like the human skin. This type of electronic skin can be used to
develop more realistic prosthetic limbs that will help disabled individuals
restore their sense of touch.
Other potential applications include
developing more intelligent robots that can perform disaster recovery tasks or
take over mundane operations such as packing of items in warehouses. The NUS
team is therefore looking to further apply the ACES platform on advanced robots
and prosthetic devices in the next phase of their research.
Story Source: Materials
provided by National University of Singapore.. Note: Content may be
edited for style and length.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190718112417.htm
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