{"id":31016,"date":"2016-12-13T00:03:55","date_gmt":"2016-12-13T00:03:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/new-robot-has-a-human-touch\/"},"modified":"2016-12-13T00:03:52","modified_gmt":"2016-12-13T00:03:52","slug":"new-robot-has-a-human-touch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/new-robot-has-a-human-touch\/","title":{"rendered":"New robot has a human touch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Most robots achieve grasping and tactile sensing through motorized means, which can be excessively bulky and rigid. A Cornell University group has devised a way for a soft robot to feel its surroundings internally, in much the same way humans do.}<\/p>\n<p>A group led by Robert Shepherd, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and principal investigator of Organic Robotics Lab, has published a paper describing how stretchable optical waveguides act as curvature, elongation and force sensors in a soft robotic hand.<\/p>\n<p>Doctoral student Huichan Zhao is lead author of &#8220;Optoelectronically Innervated Soft Prosthetic Hand via Stretchable Optical Waveguides,&#8221; which is featured in the debut edition of Science Robotics.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Most robots today have sensors on the outside of the body that detect things from the surface,&#8221; Zhao said. &#8220;Our sensors are integrated within the body, so they can actually detect forces being transmitted through the thickness of the robot, a lot like we and all organisms do when we feel pain, for example.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Optical waveguides have been in use since the early 1970s for numerous sensing functions, including tactile, position and acoustic. Fabrication was originally a complicated process, but the advent over the last 20 years of soft lithography and 3-D printing has led to development of elastomeric sensors that are easily produced and incorporated into a soft robotic application.<\/p>\n<p>Shepherd&#8217;s group employed a four-step soft lithography process to produce the core (through which light propagates), and the cladding (outer surface of the waveguide), which also houses the LED (light-emitting diode) and the photodiode.<\/p>\n<p>The more the prosthetic hand deforms, the more light is lost through the core. That variable loss of light, as detected by the photodiode, is what allows the prosthesis to &#8220;sense&#8221; its surroundings.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If no light was lost when we bend the prosthesis, we wouldn&#8217;t get any information about the state of the sensor,&#8221; Shepherd said. &#8220;The amount of loss is dependent on how it&#8217;s bent.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The group used its optoelectronic prosthesis to perform a variety of tasks, including grasping and probing for both shape and texture. Most notably, the hand was able to scan three tomatoes and determine, by softness, which was the ripest.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-16996 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/161212134605_1_540x360.jpg\" alt=\"(A) Schematic of hand structure and components; (B) image of the fabricated hand mounted on a robotic arm with each finger actuated at \u0394P = 100 kPa.\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Most robots achieve grasping and tactile sensing through motorized means, which can be excessively bulky and rigid. A Cornell University group has devised a way for a soft robot to feel its surroundings internally, in much the same way humans do.} A group led by Robert Shepherd, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[75],"byline":[2491],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-31016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-technology","tag-homenews","byline-science-daily"],"bylines":[{"id":2491,"name":"SCIENCE DAILY","slug":"science-daily","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2491,"name":"SCIENCE DAILY","slug":"science-daily","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31016\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31016"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=31016"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=31016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}