Star Wars Inspires Scientists to Create Artificial Skin
Singaporean scientists are working on touch-responsive artificial skin. They admit that one of the inspirations was a scene from Star Wars.
If you think that Star Wars is mere fiction that has no reflection in reality, you will now have to slightly redefine your thinking. Do you remember the scene from the original Star Wars trilogy when Luke Skylwaker has his severed hand replaced with a mechanical limb? It inspired scientists from Singapore to work on artificial skin. The results are already impressive, and this is just the experimental phase.
This invention is called ACES (Asynchronous Coded Electronic Skin). It consists of 100 sensors, which are designed to help reproduce the feeling of touch against objects, as well as the natural reaction of the skin to pain and temperature. What's more, lab technicians claim that the processing of information by the device takes place faster than in the human nervous system. At current stage, ACES can read Braille text with an efficiency of more than 90%.
Benjamin Tee, the research team's leader, says:
“So humans need to slide [a body part - editorial note] to feel texture, but in this case the skin, with just a single touch, is able to detect textures of different roughness. (...) So by recreating an artificial version of the skin, for their prosthetic devices, they can hold a hand and feel the warmth and feel that it is soft, how hard are they holding the hand."
The project of the National University of Singapore seems really ambitious and already meets with considerable interest of the medical world. Tee admits, however, that the device still requires a lot of work in order to enter into widespread use. It seems that the Force in Star Wars is stronger than anyone may have thought and it affects the imagination of even the most talented scientists.
