Scientists create artificial skin that allows robots to feel pain

You know what? Robots aren’t suffering enough. Luckily, researchers at the University of Glasgow are on hand to help with that, with the development of a new type of artificial skin that can feel pain. The team behind the invention reports that a mechanical hand covered with the new ‘skin’ learned extraordinarily quickly to respond to negative stimuli, such as jabbing its palm with a sharp object.
The electronic skin, which draws inspiration from the human nervous system, allows for robots to avoid processing delays that occur with current touch-sensitivity. The team believes this could pave the way for robots capable of interacting in new ways, or even prosthetic limbs with almost human-like levels of sensitivity.
So robots might be able to feel pain from, say, stepping on a LEGO, but they’re probably still some way away from the existential dread brought on by watching interpretive dance videos on TikTok. Lucky robots.