Artificial Finger Could Bring Touch To Robot Hands
Researchers are developing a sense of touch, at least, a sense of touch for robotic machinery. A group of 13 researchers are working on an international project to develop an artificial finger with a sense of touch. The finger would be directly connected to the nervous system, the researchers said. It would contain sensors on its surface in the same numbers as our fingers do. The sensors translate pressure and mechanical movement into an electronic code. This would then decoded by the wearers brain, once they were trained to interpret the signals. "Compared to the hand prostheses which are currently on the market, an integrated sense of touch would be a major improvement. It would be a truly modern and biometric device which would give the patient the feeling as if it belonged to his own body," says Dr. Lucia Beccai from the Centre for Micro-Robotics at the Italian Institute for Technology. The finger would be important for people who have lost fingers or hands. The prototy...