MIT gives soft robotic gripper better sense of touch and perception

MIT researchers built a soft robotic gripper that uses embedded cameras and deep learning to enable high-resolution tactile sensing and "proprioception" (awareness of positions and movements of the body). One of the hottest topics in robotics is the field of soft robots, which utilizes squishy and flexible materials rather than traditional rigid materials. But soft robots have been limited due to their lack of good sensing. A good robotic gripper needs to feel what it is touching (tactile sensing), and it needs to sense the positions of its fingers (proprioception). Such sensing has been missing from most soft robots.