SKIRMISHER

Artificial whiskers “feel” the shape of things, in 3-D, helping robots to see and move around like Jackie Chan, or any cockroach.

Whiskers are cool if you want to be as annoying as the cheshire cat, but they can ramp up the strangeness factor if you’re thinking of “hot” perfect humanoids like S1m0ne and instead get something else that’s distractingly hirsute. But it seems whiskered robots would at least comprise a good majority of robot population in the future, as some current researchers see whiskers a great way to boost machine vision and maneuverability.

“Whiskers on planetary rovers might be able to figure out topography and surface texture of the ground, and that’s important to know if a rover is about to get caught in sand,” said co-researcher Mitra Hartmann of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

via LIVE SCIENCE

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