Q&A: Robots can’t feel; these sensors could change that

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A research team, including Huanyu “Larry” Cheng, James L. Henderson Jr. Memorial Associate Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics at Penn State, is using pressure sensors — tiny devices, roughly the size of a paperclip, that can measure the force applied over an area — to design a highly sensitive electronic “skin” to use alongside robots and prosthetic limbs. Cheng is a corresponding author on a paper, recently published in Nano-Micro Letters, that introduces the.