Professor Nathan Lepora and his team celebrated the fact that their landmark robotic finger-tip which makes human-like ‘nerve’ signals was recognised at the Elektra Awards 2022.
Professor Lepora (Department of Engineering Mathematics) collected the Readers’ Choice Award: University Research Project of the Year at the 20th anniversary of the awards held at a grand ceremony in London.
Nathan and his team made the headlines earlier this year after creating the sense of touch in an artificial fingertip. They did this by using a 3D-printed mesh of pin-like papillae on the underside of the compliant skin, which mimic the dermal papillae found between the outer epidermal and inner dermal layers of human tactile skin. The papillae are made on advanced 3D-printers that can mix together soft and hard materials to create complicated structures like those found in biology.
This highly sensitive, 3D-printed fingertip could help robots become more dexterous and improve the performance of prosthetic hands by giving them an in-built sense of touch.