'Epidermal VR' gives technology a human touch
Imagine holding hands with a loved one on the other side of the world. Or feeling a pat on the back from a teammate in the online game "Fortnite."
Nov 20, 2019
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220
Engineering
News tagged with sense of touch
Robotics
Artificial finger able to identify surface material with 90% accuracy
A team of researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has developed an artificial finger that was able to identify certain surface materials with 90% accuracy. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, ...
Engineering
Wireless, soft e-skin for interactive touch communication in the virtual world
Sensing a hug from each other via the internet may be a possibility in the near future. A research team led by City University of Hong Kong (CityU) recently developed a wireless, soft e-skin that can both detect and deliver ...
Feb 23, 2023
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50
Electronics & Semiconductors
Tactile tattoos to make virtual worlds tangible
Virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), often combined under the term 'extended reality (XR)', are increasingly losing their niche status and entering the mass market. Think of the metaverse, gaming, applications in industry ...
Mar 9, 2023
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9
Robotics
Touchy subject: 3D printed fingertip 'feels' like human skin
Machines can beat the world's best chess player, but they cannot handle a chess piece as well as an infant. This lack of robot dexterity is partly because artificial grippers lack the fine tactile sense of the human fingertip, ...
Apr 5, 2022
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159
Robotics
Energy-generating synthetic skin for affordable prosthetic limbs and touch-sensitive robots
A new type of energy-generating synthetic skin could create more affordable prosthetic limbs and robots capable of mimicking the sense of touch, scientists say.
Nov 30, 2020
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133
Robotics
Teaching artificial intelligence to connect senses like vision and touch
In Canadian author Margaret Atwood's book The Blind Assassin, she says that "touch comes before sight, before speech. It's the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth."
Jun 17, 2019
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21
Hardware
Separated by distance, but connected by technology: Using affective haptic devices
The sense of touch is important for human development, interpersonal communication, and social attachment. For situations where one is separated by distance affective haptic devices (AHDs) can be used as a new form of sense ...
May 13, 2022
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19
Engineering
Haptics researchers find that the biomechanics of the skin can perform useful tactile computations
As our body's largest and most prominent organ, the skin also provides one of our most fundamental connections to the world around us. From the moment we're born, it is intimately involved in every physical interaction we ...
Apr 15, 2020
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204
Electronics & Semiconductors
More skin-like: An electronic skin that can feel
What if we didn't have skin? We would have no sense of touch, no detection of coldness or pain, leaving us unable to respond to most situations. The skin is not just a protective shell for organs, but rather a signaling system ...
Nov 24, 2020
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15
Somatosensory system
The somatosensory system is a diverse sensory system comprising the receptors and processing centres to produce the sensory modalities such as touch, temperature, proprioception (body position), and nociception (pain). The sensory receptors cover the skin and epithelia, skeletal muscles, bones and joints, internal organs, and the cardiovascular system. While touch is considered one of the five traditional senses, the impression of touch is formed from several modalities; In medicine, the colloquial term touch is usually replaced with somatic senses to better reflect the variety of mechanisms involved.
The system reacts to diverse stimuli using different receptors: thermoreceptors, mechanoreceptors and chemoreceptors. Transmission of information from the receptors passes via sensory nerves through tracts in the spinal cord and into the brain. Processing primarily occurs in the primary somatosensory area in the parietal lobe of the cerebral cortex.
At its simplest, the system works when a sensory neuron is triggered by a specific stimulus such as heat; this neuron passes to an area in the brain uniquely attributed to that area on the body—this allows the processed stimulus to be felt at the correct location. The mapping of the body surfaces in the brain is called a homunculus and is essential in the creation of a body image.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
