Current Event #3

Biotech scientists have engineered electronic skin that can sense touch like artificial limbs. The nano skin responds to almost the same pressures as human skin. It's an advance towards replacing today's clumsy robots and artificial arms with smarter, touch-sensitive upgrades so that if you lose a limb you can still use your new one as if you never lost it. "Humans generally know how to hold a fragile egg without breaking it," said Ali Javey, an associate professor of computer sciences at the University of California at Berkeley, who led one of the research teams. If we ever wanted a robot that could unload the dishes, for instance, we'd want to make sure it doesn't break the wine glasses in the process. But we'd also want the robot to grip the stock pot without dropping it. The "e-skin" made by Javey's team comprises a matrix of nanowires made of germanium and silicon rolled onto a sticky polyimide film." The prototype, measuring 49 square centimetres (7.6 square inches), can detect pressure ranging from these things typing on a keyboard or holding an object. Even routine daily actions, such as brushing one's teeth, turning the pages of a newspaper or dressing a small child would easily defeat today's robots ability's but when they finally complete the nano skin they can help people to do all these things they could even get robots to do this for parents instead of hiring baby-sitters. This nano skin would be especially useful in applications where we want to send robots into environments, including space, where it could be dangerous for humans to go," said Bao. "They could collect information and send it back. It could be also used to do police force if the had to go out on an armed robber or something, or the army.