Robotics has been actively developing in recent years, and every now and then we publish amazing news about the achievements of scientists and engineers in this field. This time, interesting information came from the Gottfried Leibniz University of Hanover. Scientists decided to give robots a sense of self-preservation by teaching them to experience pain. To do this, specialists had to develop a kind of artificial nervous system and teach it to react differently to external influences.
Self-defense is completely normal in the human world. If a person burns a hand, he immediately pulls it away from the source of heat, thereby saving himself from more serious tissue damage. But the robot, due to the lack of ideas about pain, will not react in any way to damage to its body. It was this defect that German scientists decided to correct. They created a model of the nervous system, thanks to sensors capable of sensing influences from the external environment, such as pressure or temperature. And now the robot, which will feel the touch of something very hot, will simply pull its manipulator away from the heat source.
Pain is one of the most effective defense systems of the human, and indeed any other organism. So why not endow such protection and mechanisms artificially created by us? Scientists have divided pain into several levels: mild pain, moderate pain, and severe pain. The robot must respond to each such impact accordingly, classifying the level of danger that threatens it. So far, testing of this system is in very early stages, but such undertakings in the future can save a lot of expensive robotics from damage.
