An Artificial Nerve System Developed at Stanford Gives Prosthetic Devices and Robots a Sense of Touch

Stanford and Seoul National University researchers have developed an artificial sensory nerve system that can activate the twitch reflex in a cockroach and identify letters in the Braille alphabet. The work, reported May 31 in Science, is a step toward creating artificial skin for prosthetic limbs, to restore sensation to amputees, and perhaps one day give robots some type of reflex capability. According to the researchers, skin is a complex sensing, signaling, and decision-making system. This new artificial sensory nerve system is a step toward making skin-like sensory neural networks for all sorts of applications.