Artificial skin designed for underwater robot
Ateam of researchers have developed an artificial skin for a robot, which can help it to feel the difference between objects and living sea creatures. The robot could be used to pick litter from the ocean or for underwater exploration.
The skin’s sense of touch is caused by something called “magnetoelastic effect”. This means that when it is pushed or pulled by coming into contact with something, its magnetic field changes.
It was thought that magnetoelastic effect only happened in rigid metals. However, researchers from the University of California, US recently discovered it also happened in polymers – soft, skin-like plastic materials. Using their discovery, the team designed an artificial skin from polymers that could detect magnetic changes. The skin was attached to a robot arm, which was trained to pick up a number of objects. These included samples of rubbish, like bottle caps or plastic cups, and ocean creatures such as starfish and shellfish like scallops or sea snails.
The researchers used artificial intelligence (AI) to train the robot arm to learn the different magnetic signals triggered by the different objects. AI is the name given to a computer system that can learn and “think” for itself.
Once trained, the arm could correctly identify 95% of the objects it picked up as either living things or objects.
Experts think the new technology could be used to do underwater jobs that involve grabbing objects. By giving the job to a robot, it could save companies time and money.