The first artificial finger-with sensitive touch
Baku, July 25 (AZERTAC). Sense of touch - one of the modest set to us by nature of the five senses, which is lost with the loss of a significant part of not only cognitive but also emotional components of our judgments about the world. Unfortunately, illness or accidents occurring due to our innate desire as deeply as possible to understand the world, or simply through negligence, may rob us of this great feeling of forever … But recently, two groups of European researchers, working concurrently on projects NanoBioTact and NanoBioTouch, reported progress in creating the first ever artificial sensing fingers. The main scientific objective of the work is to radically improve the understanding of human mechanotransduction system that would create a mimic this system nanobiosensory. To address this challenge has been created a team of researchers of different disciplines, representing 13 European research institutes, universities and companies. So far they have managed to build a functional prototype of the first ever artificial sensing fingers. Its work is based on the interaction of a set of pressure sensors that mimic the sensitivity, dynamics and spatial resolution of the tactile neural receptors of the person. The prototype can be directly connected to the central nervous system. Also made an interesting observation: After the device in the vestments of leather and artificial application of tactile drawing device sensitivity to vibration has increased markedly. Biomimetic finger vibrate quite differently - depending on the quality of surface texture, for which he is currently slipping, which leads to the generation of signals of different type, characteristic for each of the textures. After the patient gets used to these signals, it is quite able to distinguish whether the surface is smooth or rough. In this case, scientists say they have created sensors very accurately replicate the principle of natural receptors. In general, there is no doubt that the use of such artificial finger, together with conventional prosthetic hands can bring prosthetics on a completely different level by returning an accident at least part of the former sensitivity. In this case, even a plastic hand may not seem so strange.
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