We have seen some crazy stuff being done by robots; playing with dangerous knives and spoon-feeding a person, but we haven’t seen a robot having the sense of feel, i.e. until now. I know it might feel odd, but let’s think about this crazy idea for a few moments and think about its implementation on prosthetic limbs. An amputated person could literally feel and sense the texture of any object by gripping it.
Scientists have developed BioTac, which is a mechanical finger that can sense texture. This mechanical finger has sensors surrounded by a special liquid and covered in a flexible skin. Whenever this mechanical finger touches an object, it creates vibrations; every pattern has its own special kind of vibrations which are then sensed by the sensors. Hence, BioTac can tell you which object it is. According to tests and results the BioTac could interpret 117 different textures with 95 percent of success. Well it would be worth sharing that when same experiments were conducted with humans, BioTac gave more accurate results.