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- AiFoam is a smart foam developed by the National University of Singapore.
- It allows robotic hands to self-heal and recognize nearby objects with changes in electric fields.
- The new design is a breakthrough in robotics and prosthetics research towards ever smarter tools.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Robots aren't just becoming more graceful, sophisticated, and precise; they're becoming more autonomous, too.
From serving coffee or cocktails, designing tattoos, and keeping people company to exploring the rocky cavities of Mars and the Mariana trench, the list of tasks robots can perform is constantly growing.
And now, robotic hands may also be able to self-repair with a new intelligent foam called AiFoam.
The smart foam is artificially innervated.
This means that - similarly to how human skin can heal itself when bumped or wounded - if used within robotic hands, they could heal themselves or recognize nearby objects by detecting their electric fields, Reuters reported.
AiFoam is a highly elastic polymer created by mixing fluoropolymer with a compound that reduces surface tension.
When the robot hand is cut, the spongy material fuses into a single piece.
To replicate the human sense of touch, the researchers embedded microscopic metal particles and added tiny electrodes under the foamy surface.
When pressure is applied, the metal particles move closer inside the polymer and change their electrical properties.
Electrodes connected to a computer detect these changes and tell the robot what to do.
"There are many different applications for this material, especially in robotics and prosthetic devices, where robots need to be much smarter when working with humans," explained lead researcher Benjamin Tee of the National University of Singapore.
"When I move my finger close to the sensor, you can see that the sensor is measuring changes in my electric field and responds accordingly to my touch," explained the researcher.
Hands can measure not only the amount but also the direction of the force.
This is a huge breakthrough towards smarter, more interactive robots, which could benefit users of connected prostheses, enabling them to use robotic arms and hands in a more intuitive way to grasp objects.
AiFoam is the first material that combines self-healing properties with proximity and pressure sensing.
After a couple of years of development, the developers hope to have it on the market and applied to robots within the next five years.
In recent years, robotic arms and legs have taken off: MIT developed a technique in 2018 to connect gestures and brainwaves to prostheses, while the market for medical exoskeletons has been growing steadily.
Other new products include the Luke arm created by Deka for the military agency DARPA, and Hero Arm, ' a 3D printed, electrically coded myoelectric prosthesis made by Open Bionics.
The prosthesis has already been tested in clinical trials with children in the UK.
There is also YouBionic's Arm, which uses 3D printing to cut costs.
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