Scientists are trying to create robots for all kinds of purposes to facilitate human life as well as to stretch the possibilities of what man can achieve in creating machines. Robots have been made to have a sense of location and temperature through their semiconductor nanowires. Recently, researchers at the University of California’s Viterbi School of Engineering have developed a robot with tactile sensor.

It has been made to resemble as best as it could to humans in their ability and sense of touch. But this robot has proved to be indeed superhuman when it comes to it as it can identify a whole lot of things that even human fingertips fail to pinpoint. It is a positive advancement in robotics and prostheses. The researchers have been able to develop a finger-sized BioTac sensor that can is sensitive to vibrations. There is also a microphone specially designed called a hydrophone that can be used underwater.

The robot can tell through all of this gadgetry the direction of forces applied and an object’s temperature. They have developed this robot after closely studying human sense of touch and after many attempts. Still there is room for improvement on this technology and if it can be made good, it surely could be made better. Further details of this new study have been published in Frontiers in Neurobotics. It could be used for prosthetic hands and other industrial robots.