Robots To Become Even More Human Like as Researchers Teach Them to Feel Pain
Robots are becoming more and more widely used for a number of different things today such as those used for manufacturing products, robotic vacuum cleaners, space robots, the list is quite long!
Robots are becoming more and more widely used for a number of different things today such as those used for manufacturing products, robotic vacuum cleaners, space robots, the list is quite long! But what robots haven’t been able to do, up until now, is to feel and react to pain.
You may be wondering why we would want robots to react to pain when surely the reason for using them is to protect humans from harm. Well, researchers from the Leibniz University of Hanover believe that in teaching robots to feel pain and respond appropriately they are effectively prolonging their shelf life.
Robots still need to be protected from being harmed just as humans do if we are to continue using them. One of the researchers working on the project, Johannes Kuehn strongly believes that robots should mimic the same reactions we as human do when encountering pain and a reflex controller could do just that.
READ ALSO: It is Now Possible To Get Real Meat Without Hurting a Single Animal
It is not the first time this type of idea has been implemented. Torsten Kroegar and team at Stanford and the University of Rome – La Sapienza created a robot five years ago that used a reflex controller to avoid collisions with people. Although it was effective in avoiding humans, it had no real concerns for its own safety and could certainly not react to any form of pain.
The new ‘pain feeling’ robots will be produced using robot tissue similar to that of human skin and will allow the researchers to decide what amount of pain should be felt at what time. The reflex controller would then react accordingly after determining if it felt a slight, moderate or extreme pain.
Protecting robots is essential if we are to continue using them for our own needs and safety. While enhancing technology and making breakthrough developments are what all scientists are trying to achieve, so is saving money and protecting the lives of all.
More Stories to Read
- Is 100% Renewable Energy Possible For Our World By 2050?
- 12 Million More Vehicles Have Been Recalled in U.S. for Faulty Airbags
- Global Data Sharing Can Save the Lives of Cancer Patients
- Two of the World’s Largest Internet Based Names Unite to Lay Gigantic Cable Across the Ocean
Related Coverage
- AI is Becoming More Human Like Every Day
- Are Robots Really Bad For Humans?
- The Rise of the Robots – Need We Be Worried?
- Artificial Intelligence Forms Become More Integrated Within Businesses
- Why We Should Go To Such Trouble To Capture An Asteroid
Don't miss new tech stories on Google
Add TrendinTech once in the Google app and our stories appear in your news suggestions.
Daniel Okafor
Daniel Okafor is the Senior AI Reporter at TrendinTech, where he covers large language models, machine learning research and the practical use of artificial intelligence across business and government. He previously reported on artificial intelligence for MIT Technology Review, covering the labs behind the current generation of frontier models and the policy debates in Washington and Brussels. Daniel holds a Master of Science in Machine Learning from Carnegie Mellon University and follows the research community closely, attending NeurIPS and ICML each year to speak with the people behind the papers. He has a particular interest in evaluation: how models are benchmarked, where those benchmarks fail and what that means for the companies betting on them.
All stories by Daniel Okafor (316)