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Magnetic Skin for Tactile Sensing
Robotic device with 2 magnetic sensing prongs safely lifting an egg. Image from CityU Research and Technology.
Robotic device with 2 magnetic sensing prongs safely lifting an egg. Image from CityU Research and Technology.
Description
Yajing Shen, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering of the City University of Hong Kong has developed soft magnetic skin for super-resolution tactile sensing with force self-decoupling. Human skin can sense small changes and perceive stimulus better than mechanoreceptors which are not as tightly spaced. The existing tactile sensors prior to the magnetic skin did not give information on force decoupling or spatial resolution, both of which are necessary for dexterous grasping and manipulation. The new magnetic skin is a sinusoidally magnetized flexible magnetic film (with a thickness ~0.5 mm) with self-decoupling and skin resolution that can grasp fragile objects and thread a needle with teleoperation. This magnetic skin can sense feedback therefore it may be a good option for domestic or healthcare robots. According to Dr. Shen this magnetic skin can also be used for “texture recognition, smart prosthetics, human-robot interaction”. Enjoy this video of a robotic hand in action, grasping and carrying an egg.
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Bibliography
Yan, Y. et al. (2021) Science Robotics, 6(51). Available at: https://doi.org/https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.abc8801.