It has sensors whose sensitiveness approaches that of a human fingertip. Until now, robots were capable of reacting only to static pressure. The novel sensor makes them very sensitive to movements and vibrations as well, and capable of registering contact with a even a three- millimeter fragment of paper. One such sensor consists of a small tuft of hair containing a capacitor, which is coupled to an evaluative system and is thus capable of registering every sort of contact.
Several sensors placed on a robot's hand enable the computer.
To recognize the complicated connections involved in gripping something. This, say the developers, is of the utmost importance for intuitive robot controls. In the long term, they hope that their research will lead to more rugged and flexible gripping mechanisms in service robots.