Science & Technology

Should robots be taught how to feel pain ?

By T.K. Randall
May 30, 2016 ·  8 comments

Can a robot be taught to feel pain ? Image Credit: CC BY-SA 3.0 Richard Greenhill and Hugo Elias The team, which is comprised of scientists from Leibniz University in Hannover, believes that the ability to directly sense physical damage like we do could help machines react more quickly to threats and could even help to protect the humans working alongside them.

Similar to how our own neurons transmit pain, the artificial nervous system will enable a robot to sense any damage sustained so it can then assess the severity and initiate countermeasures.

"Pain is a system that protects us," said researcher Johannes Kuehn. "When we move away from the source of pain, it helps us not get hurt."During a recent experiment, a robotic arm was equipped with the new sensors while a volunteer applied various levels of pressure in an effort to simulate different severities of pain.

"A robot needs to be able to detect and classify unforeseen physical states and disturbances, rate the potential damage they may cause to it, and initiate appropriate countermeasures, i.e., reflexes," Kuehn and colleague Sami Haddadin wrote in a recent paper on the subject.

The unique experiment can be viewed in action in the video below.


Source: BBC News | Comments (8)

Tags: Robot, Pain