Improving touch with the artificial finger

International European researchers from the NanoBioTact and NanoBioTouch projects have created a sensitive artificial finger. The goal of these projects is to improve biomemetic sensors and their inteface with existing human neural networks. “There are many potential applications of biometric tactile sensoring, for example in prosthetic limbs where you´ve got neuro-coupling which allows the limb to sense objects and also to feed back to the brain, to control the limb. Another area would be in robotics where you might want the capability to have sense the grip of objects, or intelligent haptic exploration of surfaces for example”, says Prof. Michael Adams, the coordinator of NanoBioTact. The current prototype finger mimics the spatial resolution and tactile dynamics of a human finger very closely, but extensive testing is required before the finger system can move to large-scale commercial production.