Category: Touching
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Interactions. Robots. Dead flowers…
Researchers have created a low-cost method for soft, deformable robots to detect a range of physical interactions, from pats to punches to hugs, without relying on touch at all. Instead, a USB camera located inside the robot captures the shadow movements of hand gestures on the robot’s skin and classifies them with machine-learning software. (1)…
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Sensitive touch…
To develop a more human-like robotic gripper, it is necessary to provide sensing capabilities to the fingers. However, conventional sensors compromise the mechanical properties of soft robots. Now, scientists have designed a 3D printable soft robotic finger containing a built-in sensor with adjustable stiffness. Their work represents a big step toward safer and more dexterous…
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Touching. Not-touching. Sensing.
Through the crafty use of magnetic fields, scientists have developed the first electronic sensor that can simultaneously process both touchless and tactile stimuli. Prior attempts have so far failed to combine these functions on a single device due to overlapping signals of the various stimuli. As the sensor is readily applied to the human skin,…
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Touching the untouched.
Jellyfish are about 95% water, which makes them very difficult to study because most of the underwater tools available to marine biologists are clunky, heavy, and often shred jellyfish and other delicate creatures to pieces. A new ultra-soft gripper uses fettuccini-like ‘fingers’ inflated with water to gently grasp jellyfish and release them without harm, allowing…
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Invisible table…
Making objects invisible is no longer the stuff of fantasy but a fast-evolving science. ‘Invisibility cloaks’ using metamaterials now exist, and are beginning to be used to improve the performance of satellite antennas and sensors. Many of the proposed metamaterials, however, only work at limited wavelength ranges such as microwave frequencies. Now, scientists report a…
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