Gimme some "electronic skin'

[Taro Toporific]

Japanese scientists have developed an electric skin for robots that is "sensitive", hee, hee...
Robots get sensitive
Electronic skin could give machines a sophisticated sense of touch.
Nature.com / 30 June 2004
"Recognition of tactile information will be very important for future generations of robots," says Takao Someya at the University of Tokyo who developed the skin. A sense of touch would help them to identify objects, carry out delicate tasks and avoid collisions.

[kurohinge1]

Japanese scientists have developed an electric skin for robots that is "sensitive", hee, hee... "Recognition of tactile information will be very important for future generations of robots," says Takao Someya at the University of Tokyo who developed the skin. A sense of touch would help them to identify objects, carry out delicate tasks and avoid collisions.

Damn, and I was hoping it would be so we could torture them with cigarette burns when they didn't work properly!

I know my home computer needs some of that kind of 'treatment' so it becomes sensitive to my emotions everytime it crashes.

[Taro Toporific]

The cover stories of the July issue of WIRED focus on robots, mostly Japanese....

The Humanoid Race
Machines are getting more and more like the rest of us. A piece-by-piece guide to the globe's most advanced bots.
WIRED Issue 12.07 - July 2004
It was an astounding request. A year ago, neuroscientist Mitsuo Kawato called on the Japanese government to commit 50 billion yen ($446 million) a year for the next three decades. The dream: an Apollo-like program to build a robot with the mental, physical, and emotional capabilities of a 5-year-old child. Kawato called his plan the Atom Project, named for the popular postwar cartoon Tetsuwan Atom (known as Astroboy in the US), the story of a superhero boy robot.


Rise of the Machines
Isaac Asimov turned androids into pop culture icons - and invented the science of robotics in the process. Half a century later, his I, Robot is going Hollywood.
WIRED Issue 12.07 - July 2004 By Cory Doctorow


I, Robocop
Will Smith raps about busting bot outlaws, his secret geek past, and the future of thinking Machines.
WIRED Issue 12.07 - July 2004 By Jennifer Hillner