University of Bristol researchers have created a human-like fingertip that feels like actual skin. That’s right, this artificial fingertip was created using a 3D-printed mesh of pin-like papillae on the underside of the compliant skin, which mimics the dermal papillae found between the outer epidermal and inner dermal layers of real human tactile skin. The papillae were fabricated on advanced 3D-printers capable of mixing together soft and hard materials to create complicated structures like those found in biology.
The researchers discovered that the 3D-printed tactile fingertip produced artificial nerve signals that look like recordings from real, tactile neurons. Real human tactile nerves transmit signals from various nerve endings called mechanoreceptors, which signal the pressure and shape of a contact. When they tested their 3D-printed artificial fingertip, it ‘felt’ those same ridged shapes and discovered a very close match to the neural data. One caveat: the artificial fingertip was found to be not as sensitive to fine detail as human nerve signals.
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For me, the most exciting moment was when we looked at our artificial nerve recordings from the 3D-printed fingertip and they looked like the real recordings from over 40 years ago! Those recordings are very complex with hills and dips over edges and ridges, and we saw the same pattern in our artificial tactile data,” said Professor Lepora.
