Innovations & technologies

Robots To Soon Touch The World Around Them

Depending on how you count them, humans have a variety of senses. The big five – sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch – provide us with the vast majority of the information we require to operate in the world. In some applications, for robots to be most useful for us, they need to possess replicas of these senses. Indeed, several of the senses are already recreated in their machine versions, or work is well underway to make it a reality. Video analytics provides machine visions. Audio analysis – including speech recognition – is a well developed field. There is even work to imbue machines with a “sense of smell.” Soon, robots could be getting the sense of touch, as well.

SynTouch is developing a haptic sensor that aims to provide robots with the ability to “feel” textures. They have, using this sensor, compiled a taxonomy of more than 500 materials, from fabrics to stone, in a database called SynTouch Standard. It’s based on 15 factors, like thermal properties, friction, and coarseness. SynTouch intends to standardise the classification of how materials feel, and to take subjectivity out of the matter.