Engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., are working to develop "High-Tech Skin" that will allow robots to sense their environment and react to it, much the way humans respond when something or someone touches their skin:
"The idea is to develop a "sensitive skin" that technicians could use to cover a robot. This skin will include more than 1,000 infrared sensors that would detect an object, and send the information to the robot's brain. The brain would digest the information, apply reasoning and react within milliseconds by directing the robot to move. Future skin prototypes likely will have a higher density of sensors on the skin, which will provide the robots with even greater dexterity."
Neat stuff, huh!
Skin
