News Artificial Intelligence

Linking sense of touch to facial movement inches robots toward ‘feeling’ pain

If robots can experience pain themselves, they might understand human pain better, too

robot resembling a child's head

Touch sensors help Affetto, a robot built to resemble a child’s head, detect a signal that would cause a human pain.

Osaka University

By Laura Sanders

SEATTLE — A robot with a sense of touch may one day “feel” pain, both its own physical pain and empathy for the pain of its human companions. Such touchy-feely robots are still far off, but advances in robotic touch-sensing are bringing that possibility closer to reality.