Robot Prototype Will Let You Feel How It's 'Feeling'

Researchers in Cornell University’s Human-Robot Collaboration and Companionship Laboratory have developed a prototype robot capable of expressing "emotions" by reshaping the texture of its outer surface.

Its skin covers a grid of texture units governed by fluidic actuators, which can configure into variants of goosebumps or spikes that are keyed to different emotional states.

Cornell's Guy Hoffman says the project's future challenges include scaling the technology for incorporation into a robot, and making it more responsive to the machine's immediate emotional changes.

The researchers believe "that the integration of a texture-changing skin, combining both haptic [feel] and visual modalities, can thus significantly enhance the expressive spectrum of robots for social interaction."

From Cornell Chronicle (NY)
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