Contents
28 November 2018
Vol 3, Issue 24
Vol 3, Issue 24
Focus
- Situated experimental agents for scientific discovery
Integrating robotic collaborators into experimental practice may give rise to an exciting new paradigm.
- CASE: A HAL 9000 for 2021
CASE can plan and manage activities for a planetary base and interact with users through a dialog management system.
- Smart houses and domotics
What made smart houses scary in 1909 makes them now essential.
Research Articles
- Soft optoelectronic sensory foams with proprioception
An internally illuminated elastomeric foam detects deformations through machine learning techniques.
- A hierarchically patterned, bioinspired e-skin able to detect the direction of applied pressure for robotics
An e-skin that uses multiple levels of biologically inspired patterning is capable of discriminating both normal and tangential forces.
About The Cover
ONLINE COVER A Soft Touch. Measuring and distinguishing in real time normal and shear forces are crucial for slip detection and interaction with fragile bodies. Boutry et al. developed a multilayer electronic skin that distinguished subtle differences in force direction with microstructures inspired by human skin and sunflower floret spirals. They covered the hand of a robotic arm with the e-skin and programmed a controller to stop the automatic downward movement of the arm when a certain amount of force was detected. The resulting sensory feedback allowed the system to respond quickly enough to avoid damaging lightweight objects. [CREDIT: A. FOUDEH, C. BOUTRY, M. NEGRE, M. JORDA, O. VARDOULIS, Z. BAO/STANFORD UNIVERSITY]
