Scientists in the UK have developed a 3D printed fingertip that can touch and feel surfaces almost as humans do.
Researchers from the University of Bristol they say the technology could make robots noticeably more agile and even help improve prosthetics.
“Being able to 3D print tactile skin could create more skilled robots or significantly improve the performance of prosthetic hands by giving them an integrated sense of touch,” said Nathan Lepora, professor of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) at the University. of Bristol.
Lepora and his colleagues developed the artificial fingertip using a 3D printed network of pin-shaped papillae that mimics the observed movement between the inner and outer layers of human skin.
The team said the robotic fingertip’s sense of touch was “surprisingly” close to that of real skin.
‘Exciting moment’
In the 1980s, scientists tracked how we register touch by counting the number of neurons that were activated when people came into contact with different textured surfaces.
Lepora’s team said the robotic fingertip works in a similar way and that it can produce artificial nerve signals similar to recordings of real tactile neurons.
“For me, the most exciting moment was when we looked at our 3D printed fingertip artificial nerve recordings and they looked like real recordings from over 40 years ago,” Lepora said.
“Those recordings are very complex with hills and dips on edges and ridges, and we saw the same pattern in our artificial touch data.”
The findings were published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
How accurate is the artificial fingertip?
Although the team found an “extraordinarily close match” between the artificial fingertip and human nerve signals, it wasn’t as sensitive to the smallest details.
“The robot sense is just a little blurrier than the human sense,” Lepora said.
He suspects artificial skin is thicker than human skin, and his team is now exploring how to 3D print structures on the same microscopic scale.
Earlier this year, scientists from the Max Planck Institute in Germany revealed details of their an artificial fingertip called Insight.
Both technologies use cameras, but the German system works differently.
“What we do is point lights of different colors at that surface and then we can, in minute detail, see how everything moves as the lighting changes,” said Georg Martius, director of intelligent systems at the Max Planck Institute.
Both sensors and cameras then convert the information into signals that power artificial intelligence systems to recreate a robotic version of touch.
“We can actually measure forces from a very light touch, from 20g up to 200g with very fine resolution, so it’s really surprisingly accurate,” said Martius.
Improve industrial robotics
The advancement of touch technology, known as tactile or 3D technology, still has a long way to go before it can be used in prosthetics.
Martius, who is also working on the development of artificial skin, said there are many ways machines cannot replicate the sensitivity of the human fingertip.
“These sensors measure forces and pure forces. It’s something they can do very well,” he said.
“But our skin can also, for example, sense vibrations and temperature,” which these methods cannot yet achieve, he explained.
For now, teams in the UK and Germany hope their technology will improve productivity in industrial environments.
“The focus in my lab is more on integrating these fingertips into the robot’s hands, to give the robot’s hands autonomy and dexterity using artificial intelligence, so that you can use those robot hands to do the tasks we would do. with our hands, “Lepora said.
For more on this story, watch the video in the media player above.
.