Electronic analogue of a cat's whiskers. Free Technical Library News

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Electronic analogue of a cat's whiskers

08.02.2014

Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL) have teamed up with researchers at the University of California to create electronic whiskers similar to rats and cats.

The new whiskers, called E-Whiskers, can "feel" a pressure of 1 Pa (such pressure, for example, is exerted by a bill lying on a table surface).

Electronic whiskers are structurally tactile sensors created from flexible fibers coated with carbon nanotubes and silver nanoparticles. Depending on the specific task, the whiskers with a flexible electrically conductive substrate can be applied to almost any surface. E-Whiskers can change their electrical resistance depending on the pressure. These changes in resistance are measured in the future.

During testing, E-Whiskers were used to create a XNUMXD and XNUMXD airflow map. According to the LBL assessment, electronic whiskers can be used in the future for medical purposes in the development of devices for accurate pulse measurement, as well as in robotics. Thanks to the invention, robots will learn to navigate more accurately in complex spaces.

Other research laboratories have previously created their own versions of electronic whiskers, but their versions either provide insufficient measurement accuracy or require the use of complex electronics. In 2012, the British Robotics Laboratory in Bristol developed the Shrewbot, a long-horned robot with an electronic mustache. This robot was able not only to recognize the touch of its whiskers, but even to feel the shape of an object and the texture of its surface.

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