A bio-hybrid tactile sensor incorporating living artificial skin and an impedance sensing array

The perceived effects of augmented trail sensing and mood recognition abilities in a human-fish biohybrid system

The use of technologies to enhance human and animal perception has been explored in pioneering research about artificial life and biohybrid systems. These attempts have revealed that augmented sensing abilities can emerge from new interactions between individuals within or across species. Nevertheless, the diverse effects of different augmented capabilities have been less examined and compared. In this work, we built a human-fish biohybrid system that enhanced the vision of the ornamental fish by projecting human participants onto the arena background. In contrast, human participants were equipped with a mixed-reality device, which visualized individual fish trails (representing situation-oriented perceptions) and emotions (representing communication-oriented perceptions). We investigated the impacts of the two enhanced perceptions on the human side and documented the perceived effects from three aspects. First, both augmented perceptions considerably increase participants' attention toward ornamental fish, and the impact of emotion recognition is more potent than trail sense. Secondly, the frequency of human-fish interactions increases with the equipped perceptions. The mood recognition ability on the human side can indirectly promote the recorded positive mood of fish. Thirdly, most participants mentioned that they felt closer to those fish which had mood recognition ability, even if we added some mistakes in the accuracy of mood recognition. In contrast, the addition of trail sensing ability does not lead to a similar effect on the mental bond. These findings reveal several aspects of different perceived effects between the enhancements of communication-oriented and situation-oriented perceptions.

Seedless Hydrothermal Growth of ZnO Nanorods as a Promising Route for Flexible Tactile Sensors

Hydrothermal growth of ZnO nanorods has been widely used for the development of tactile sensors, with the aid of ZnO seed layers, favoring the growth of dense and vertically aligned nanorods. However, seed layers represent an additional fabrication step in the sensor design. In this study, a seedless hydrothermal growth of ZnO nanorods was carried out on Au-coated Si and polyimide substrates. The effects of both the Au morphology and the growth temperature on the characteristics of the nanorods were investigated, finding that smaller Au grains produced tilted rods, while larger grains provided vertical rods. Highly dense and high-aspect-ratio nanorods with hexagonal prismatic shape were obtained at 75 °C and 85 °C, while pyramid-like rods were grown when the temperature was set to 95 °C. Finite-element simulations demonstrated that prismatic rods produce higher voltage responses than the pyramid-shaped ones. A tactile sensor, with an active area of 1 cm², was fabricated on flexible polyimide substrate and embedding the nanorods forest in a polydimethylsiloxane matrix as a separation layer between the bottom and the top Au electrodes. The prototype showed clear responses upon applied loads of 2-4 N and vibrations over frequencies in the range of 20-800 Hz.

Organismal Engineering: Towards a Robotic Taxonomic Key for Devices Using Organic Materials

Can we create robots with the behavioral flexibility and robustness of animals? Engineers often use bio-inspiration to mimic animals. Recent advances in tissue engineering now allow the use of components from animals. By integrating organic and synthetic components, researchers are moving towards the development of engineered organisms whose structural framework, actuation, sensing, and control are partially or completely organic. This review discusses recent exciting work demonstrating how organic components can be used for all facets of robot development. Based on this analysis, we propose a Robotic Taxonomic Key to guide the field towards a unified lexicon for device description.