"Ouch!" -Robots to Feel Pressure & Pain

The cry of so many fictional robots can be heard with revelation that researchers have created artificial skin for robots that can feel pressure and pain. For work in space, working with humans, this is a feasible idea, allowing robots to feel what it is that they are doing. But just wait for the day when they become self-aware, then we’re all in for it!

In 2005, Vladimir Lumelsky of NASA’s Goddard center worked on sensor embedded skin coverings for robots. The impetus for NASA being involved with this was specifically for the robots that would be working in space alongside their astronauts.

That same year saw Takao Someya head a group of University of Tokyo researchers to design a robotic skin consisting of pressure- and temperature-sensing networks, each laminated together. The subsequent artificial skin is able to detect both pressure and temperature simultaneously.

But robotic cruelty aside, such developments also have implications for humans as well.

Such artificial skins as have been developed for robots can also be applied to prosthetic limbs providing humans with even further functionality in replacement of limbs that have been lost. The network within the artificial skin will be able to work just as fast as human skin, relaying information from the sensors to the network and then to the brain.

All in all, maybe providing amputees with such advances is enough of a reason to eventually allow robots to feel the pain we will inevitably inflict on them when they attempt to rid us from this planet.

Posted by Josh Hill

Links:

http://www.livescience.com/technology/080109-artificial-skin.html

Comments

[Darnell Clayton]

Interesting...

Although we may want to be too careful about how far we progress as the last thing humans want to hear from their robot slaves is the phrase "robotic rights."

Joking aside, this is a good thing for amputees, as well as future cyborgs (singularity anyone?)

[Daniel Appleton]

I think they're being a bit dramatic in calling the sensation " pain ". They should say " an analogue to pain / analoguous to pain " unless robot brains become much more complex. In this case, we'll have to invent " robot Tylenol ", " robot Valium ", " Robot Hydrocodone ", etc.

Seriously, what about a sensation similar to pleasure ? SERIOUSLY.

[Saavik]

Actually, "pain" could be very useful to a robot, in the same way it is useful to us. Pain is a body's way of letting its owner know that it is damaged or is about to be damaged. It also serves as a deterrent to keep him from harming his body further.