Robotic technology is growing rapidly and enthusiastically. The engineers are struggling every day to bring a step-up revolution in this field. Likewise, a group of researchers from the Dalian University of Technology, City University of Hong Kong, Tsinghua University, and University of Electronic Science & Technology of China has created a flexible skin patch. This flexible skin patch can deliver haptic feedback from and to a person and a remote robot operating system.
Researchers have noticed that most of the robot operating systems that a human operator can control remotely are heavy and hard to operate. Moving ahead, they cannot provide more feedback other than a video stream. On the other hand, this new technology is more users-friendly and easy-to-use.
That’s why engineers made it
That’s why engineers have made this electronic skin. This electronic skin is flexible and can easily be applied to a human skin. This flexible skin patch on a human controller can confine factors of stress and movement just like turning and twisting.
Moreover, with the sensor it has, the flexible skin patch can read information from its own sensors. It receives the information and then sends it through wireless transmitters. It has a small, vibrating magnet which can help in haptic feedback.
A cluster of patches is applied on an operator’s skin at important joints like over the elbow on the front of the arm. The sensors with wires are put on in a zigzag manner. These wires of sensors are drawn straighter when the patch is bent. This exercise provides information regarding body movements. For example, bending of the arm at the elbow or letting it loose. Â
Now, all shared data from the patches assist an operator to control a robot operating system remotely. An operator can have this control with no obligation of wearing awkward gear. Not only this but the patches are also applied to the robot’s parts for feedback to the operator. For example, patches on the robot’s fingertips. These will allow the operator to feel the smoothness or hardness of an object touched by the robot, the gentility of vibrating tiny magnets.
The team of researchers has published the results of flexible skin patch in Science and Advance. The team hopes that it would be very soon applied to all over the robotic world.