Embedded sensors may provide robots with sensory capabilities

Not satisfied with the nature-inspired soft robots they’ve already created, a Harvard University (Harvard) research team is planning to install embedded sensors that will let their creations sense movement, pressure, touch, and temperature like living organisms do. In fact, reported an AlphaGalileo article, they based the idea upon the sensory capabilities of the human body.

Previous Harvard-designed robots can crawl, swim, hold delicate objects, and aid a beating heart. However, none of them could sense and respond to their surroundings.

That’s going to change with the new manufacturing platform developed by researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering (Wyss Institute).