<p>http://vimeo.com/43688296 Are your fingers resting on a slick touchscreen or a wooden desk? The sense of touch and ability to differentiate between textures provide invaluable information about the world around us---and now they may be able to transmit that information to robots and prosthetic hands at well. <a href="http://www.frontiersin.org/Neurorobotics/10.3389/fnbot.2012.00004/abstract" title="">Researchers have developed</a> a mechanical “finger” called the BioTac, made up of a rigid central sensor surrounded by liquid and covered in a flexible skin. When the BioTac strokes a surface, that surface’s texture produces unique vibrations in the skin, which has ridges like those seen in a human fingerprint. And the BioTac’s software can interpret those vibrations, along with the force that the surface exerts on the mechanical finger, to identify 117 different textures with a 95 percent success rate. In fact, when it came to distinguishing between textures, the BioTac actually out-performed humans. [via <a href="https://popsci.com.cn/technology/article/2012-06/new-robot-finger-more-sensitive-touch-human" title="">Pop Sci</a>] </p><div class="vert-display-toggle collapsible relative flex flex-col items-center "><div class="vert-unit mt-4 mb-3 top-20"><div ad-type="mobile-desktop" class="ad-wrapper vert min-h-boombox flex items-start justify-center" data-ad-mapping="inline" data-ad-slot="Discover/inline-ad" id="div-inline-ad-0"></div></div><span aria-label="Advertisement" class="text-ad mt-1 text-[11px] uppercase">Advertisement</span></div><p><em>Video courtesy of </em><a href="http://www.usc.edu/uscnews/newsroom/news_release.php?id=2755" title="">University of Southern California</a></p>

Discover the BioTac mechanical finger, a breakthrough in sense of touch technology that identifies 117 textures with astounding accuracy.

Technology

Ingenious Sensor Gives Robots Better-Than-Human Sense of Touch---and Fingerprints

Article

News

Sophie Bushwick

Science

http://vimeo.com/43688296 Are your fingers resting on a slick touchscreen or a wooden desk? The sense of touch and ability to differentiate between textures provide invaluable information about the world around us---and now they may be able to transmit that information to robots and prosthetic hands at well. Researchers have developed a mechanical “finger” called the BioTac, made up of a rigid central sensor surrounded by liquid and covered in a flexible skin. When the BioTac strokes a surface, that surface’s texture produces unique vibrations in the skin, which has ridges like those seen in a human fingerprint. And the BioTac’s software can interpret those vibrations, along with the force that the surface exerts on the mechanical finger, to identify 117 different textures with a 95 percent success rate. In fact, when it came to distinguishing between textures, the BioTac actually out-performed humans. [via Pop Sci] Video courtesy of University of Southern California

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