Real sensory organ Researchers give robots human skin for the first time
It's news of a scientific advance, but it's a rather creepy one: Japanese researchers have covered robots with living skin cells for the first time.
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- Researchers led by Japanese scientist Shoji Takeuchi have applied living skin to robots for the first time.
- This should improve communication with humans, but also help with regeneration, touch and temperature regulation.
- A gel containing skin cells hardens in V-shaped, perforated anchors and makes the living skin stable and tear-resistant.
It is a video of a technical advance, but the clip is also somehow uncanny: it shows a two-dimensional robot covered with a three-dimensional face.
The construct is then moved mechanically ... and the face begins to grin. This grin is creepy because of the knowledge that the skin on this face is alive.
Researchers led by Professor Shoji Takeuchi from Japan have succeeded in permanently applying human skin to a robot for the first time. This should help with communication with humans on the one hand - and the robot itself on the other.
Skin offers the machines new functions such as self-healing, a sense of touch and temperature regulation, as an article in the specialist journal "Cell" describes the breakthrough. This is made possible by perforated anchors that attach the skin to the artificial surface.
Gel with skin cells as a basis
"By mimicking human skin ligament structures and using custom-made V-shaped perforations in solid materials, we have found a way to bind the skin to complex structures," Takeuchi is quoted as saying. "The natural flexibility of the skin and the strong nature of the adhesion mean that the skin can move with the mechanical components of the robot without tearing or detaching."
Where does the living skin come from? Well, this skin is not natural in the classic sense. After all, movie villain Dr. Hannibal Lecter wasn't involved, having escaped from his "Silence of the Lambs" imprisonment by disguising himself with the face of a slain guard.
Instead, a gel loaded with skin cells is used, which penetrates the V-shaped anchors and hardens there. This creates an even layer of skin that is stable and not so easy to tear off. In tests, a water vapor plasma treatment showed that the skin is even better distributed and more stable.
However, it will be several years before a robot can seduce you with its smile in everyday life. "Another important challenge is to create human-like facial expressions by integrating sophisticated actuators or muscles into the robot," Takeuchi ventures a look into the future.