Touch sensing for humanoid robots

A human-like touch and feel ability is still a major challenge yet to be solved in order to accelerate robot´s transition from performing routine, preplanned, tasks in structured industrial environments to creatively performing tasks in unstructured environments such as nuclear stations, war zones, underwater, outer space, healthand elder-care, or telemedicine. Due to those unsolved challenges encountered in the development of a truly human-like touch sensing and perception capability for humanoid robot hands, considerable effort is still required before achieving the point of replicating the human hand´s abilities by a multi-finger robot hand able to efficiently carry on dexterous robotic manipulation operations. All these challenges provide a strong incentive for using the bio-inspired approaches to develop efficient static and dynamic touch sensing technologies for the new generation of humanoid robots.