3D-Printed Skin Gives Robots the Sensation of Touch

Hackaday reports that researchers have 3D‑printed an artificial skin that gives robots the sense of touch. The system works like a resistive touch screen, using electrical impedance tomography with a flexible TPU layer, surface electrodes and conductive fabric patches to reconstruct pressure maps. In prototype tests, just sixteen electrodes produced a fairly accurate pressure map, keeping the hardware simple enough for hobbyist replication. Such tactile feedback could let humanoid robots interact with objects and people more naturally.

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