Robot shows ‘close to human-level dexterity’
A bimanual robot developed in Bristol displays tactile sensitivity close to human-level dexterity using AI to inform its actions.
Designed by scientists at Bristol University and based at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, the new Bi-Touch system allows robots to carry out manual tasks by sensing what to do from a digital helper.
The findings, published in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, show how an AI agent interprets its environment through tactile and proprioceptive feedback, and then control the robots' behaviours, enabling precise sensing, gentle interaction, and effective object manipulation to accomplish robotic tasks.
This development could be applied to tasks including fruit picking and eventually recreate touch in artificial limbs.
In a statement, lead author Yijiong Lin from the Faculty of Engineering said: “With our Bi-Touch system, we can easily train AI agents in a virtual world within a couple of hours to achieve bimanual tasks that are tailored towards the touch. And more importantly, we can directly apply these agents from the virtual world to the real world without further training.
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