1. Sensate Skins for Robots Cynthia Breazeal Dan Stiehl (S.M. MAS student)

2. Goal & Motivation  Develop full-body skin for social robot  Functions of skin and touch for human-robot interaction (HRI)  Express  Sense  Protect  Communicate  Nurture Leonardo “Tactile needs do not seem to change with aging---if anything they seem to increase” Ashley Montagu “Touch is our most social sense” Jones & Yarborough

3. Goal & Motivation  Investigate biologically inspired algorithms for large distributed sensor networks  1.1x10 axons distributed across surface  Efficient and quick processing of multi-modal information  Elegant principles for multi- modal integration 6

4. Biologically Inspired Approach  Somatic Alphabet & Hierarchical Organization  Model multiple types of “ receptors ”  Touch, pain, temperature, proprioception  Multi-modal integration based on primitives (Meredith & Stein)  Somatosensory (Hyvarinen et. al.)  Motor (Bizzi & Mussa-Ivaldi)  Visual (Jones & Palmer, Kruger et. al.) Motor Cortex Neuron (hard, soft, curvature) Joint Angle (posture) “The Soft Red Ball is Rolling Down My Arm” Somatosensory Cortical Neuron (orientation, direction) Visual Processing (Shape, Color, Depth) FSR (indentation) Capacitive (proximity) Camera (vision) WORLD (people and things) “ Letters ” “ Words ” “ Sentences ”

5. Milestones to Date  Mechanical hands with integrated sensing & computation  Articulated fingers for active touch  40 FSR, capacitive sensing  Silicone skin glove

6. Milestones to Date  Embedded Modular Scalable sensing network  PIC16F876A 20MHz Microprocessor  57600 baud serial communication  Poll 64 sensors in 6ms.  Hierarchical organization  Distribute tactile sensors over body regions  Based on somatopic map

7. Milestones to Date  “ Fleshing ” out letters and words of somatosensory alphabet  Letters: model slowly and rapidly adapting mechanoreceptors (FSR)  Words: model population based cortical processing  Centroid  Orientation  Direction of motion Motion Orientation Direction

8. Next Steps  Apply alphabet to “ sentences ”  Active touch for exploration and manipulation  Communicative touch for interaction with people  Multi-sensor integration based on primitives  Add in vision, limb proprioception, movement primitives  Spread to other parts of body according to cortical distribution  Arms & Face