Communications of the ACM
Robot Can Understand What a Hug Is
Cornell University researchers have created a low-cost method for soft, deformable robots to detect a range of physical interactions, using a USB camera inside the robot to capture shadow movements of hand gestures on the robot's skin and classifying the
Credit: techxplore.com
A prototype soft robot with nylon skin developed by researchers at Cornell University is imbued with sensory perception that Cornell's Yuhan Hu said lies somewhere between human touch and sight.
The team stretched the skin over a 1.2-meter (3.9-foot) cylindrical scaffold atop a wheeled platform, with a commercial USB camera for interpreting different types of touch on the nylon.
The Cornell researchers then compiled a database from camera images of humans making one of six interactions with the robot's skin, training a neural network to detect and identify different interactions with up to 92% accuracy.
The team matched simple commands to the gestures, and also showed that with a projector added, the robot could display a user interface on its skin for use as a touchscreen.
From New Scientist
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