The science of human touch – and why it's so hard to replicate in robots

The science of human touch - and why it's so hard to replicate in robots Robots now see the world with an ease that once belonged only to science fiction. They can recognise objects, navigate cluttered spaces and sort thousands of parcels an hour. But ask a robot to touch something gently, safely or meaningfully, and the limits appear instantly. As a researcher in soft robotics working on artificial skin and sensorised bodies, I've found that trying to give robots a sense of touch forces us to confront just how astonishingly sophisticated human touch really is. My work began with the seemingly simple question of how robots might sense the world through their bodies.