AI Robots Use Vision and Touch to Pack Produce

Robots have mastered sight and sound, and new technology is helping them fine-tune their sense of touch for a surprising use case. With a background in electronics, engineering, and bionanotechnology, Dr. Atif Syed was fascinated with nano-scale devices that can have a massive impact on processes. This focus led Syed, the CEO of Wootzano, a UK-based robotics company, to create an electronic skin for robots that enables awareness of pressure sensitive contact. "I knew that one of the biggest issues was giving robots the sense of real touch like humans have," he explains. "The electronic skin sensors can feel how much force is applied and the exact direction of a motion. The most interesting part is that this capability is on a completely stretchable material."