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New touch technology developed in the UK will help patients who have lost sensitivity in their hands and fingers, and could give a sense of feeling to robotics for medical surgery and nuclear decommissioning.
Haptic technology, designed to create the perception of touch, is a lively research field in laboratories around the world. But a new system unveiled on Wednesday by researchers at University College London promises to offer the “most natural” sensory feedback developed so far.
Speaking at the British Science Festival, the project leaders, Helge Wurdemann and Sara Abela Abad of UCL, said their “bio-inspired haptic system” simulated sensations of touch with unrivalled sensitivity.
While haptic technology has long existed, the system created by UCL scientists offers potential new medical, industrial and commercial applications.
The soft fingertip device mimics sensation by stimulating touch receptors in human skin, using vibrations at different frequencies and strengths.
“We adopted a bio-inspired approach, focusing on how our perception of features such as object edges, textures, and skin stretch relies heavily on the four main types of receptors within our skin,” said Abad.
She added that the technology offered a way of “incorporating touch into our virtual social interactions” and could act as “a diagnostic tool” for patients who experience sensitivity loss.
In a clinical trial due to begin within three months at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London, the device will be compared with conventional methods of assessing touch that apply physical objects from soft balls and brushes to sharp pins to the skin.
In future, the technology could be used to treat people whose sense of touch has been damaged by disease or injury, Wurdemann said.
The team is also exploring applications in robot-assisted surgery. Palpation — physically feeling a patient’s organs or tissues to assess their healthiness — could be enhanced by haptic feedback.
“If cancerous tissue is embedded inside some other tissue or an organ so that you can’t see it, we can detect the softness of the tissue beneath the surface with a sensor and feed the information to the haptic device on the console,” Abad said.
It could also have a role in nuclear decommissioning. “If you need to disassemble radioactive materials, a realistic sense of touch could be crucial to sorting out the different components,” Wurdemann said.
In future, there could be consumer applications for social media, with the technology adapted to make a glove that people could wear to hold virtual hands on video calls across the world.
The researchers are discussing with UCL Business, the university’s technology transfer subsidiary, how to commercialise the technology.
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