Researchers want robots to feel pain

Researchers in Germany are developing a way for robots to feel pain, in the hopes that doing so will enable them to better protect humans. The researchers, from Leibniz University of Hannover, are working on an "artificial robot nervous system to teach robots how to feel pain," IEEE Spectrum reports, and presented their project at a robotics and automation conference in Sweden last week. Under the system, robots would identify pain and quickly respond to avoid further damage to their parts. Johannes Kuehn, one of the researchers working on the system, says that enabling robots to feel and react to pain could help mitigate damage in the same way that humans sense pain to protect themselves. "Pain is a system that protects us," Kuehn tells IEEE Spectrum.