Giving robots a human-like exterior has been the norm for years, even centuries. But giving them real living skin that can be manipulated with terrifying, slimy expressions? That’s new.
The new work is published in the journal Cell Reports Physical SciencesIt’s pretty much just an experience. This won’t be the face of your next smart home hub or vacuum.
But the ingenious machines produced by billions of years of evolution are likely to be better in some cases than artificial leather (also very much under development) or simpler surfaces. This raises several questions – many in fact, but only one question is the subject of the investigation, as is appropriate in scientific research.
In other words: How can such a surface of living tissue, whatever its advantages and disadvantages, relate to the mechanical basis of a robot’s limb or “face”?
In humans and other animals, there is a network of ligaments that attach the skin to underlying muscles and tissues. I’ve found this works well. Researchers at the University of Tokyo and Harvard University wanted to test whether they could create a version of this that would allow living skin to cling closely to an artificial substrate, as well as manipulate it in different directions without unintended tearing or distortion.
How did he become their “dermis equivalent”? I’ll let you be the judge:
Ah, the fuel nightmare. But you can’t accuse it of being less than good hydration.
Of course it’s creepy now, but it’s not meant to be realistic or pretty – just to illustrate a possible way to attach living tissue to a robotic undercarriage.
Yes, that’s actually exactly what the Terminator T-100 has, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Skin-covered robots can do all sorts of useful things as well as infiltrate the past to destroy humanity’s future.
The transplanted skin could, they say, heal itself, carry biological sensors like ours to provide sensitive touch, and could also have benefits in medical or human interaction contexts.
But only if it can survive there and move in the same way our skin does during daily use. This is part of what the paper aims to show: a working method of binding and manipulation that can be used on or across the face.