A new type of intelligent foam to help robots and environmental information fusion

Researchers at the National University of Singapore have created a new material they call AIFoam, a sensory smart material that aims to give machines a more human-like touch, enabling robots to judge human intentions and respond to their environment. respond to changes. The new material is soft and elastic. It's designed to mimic human touch, not only that, but also to sense nearby objects without actually touching them. AI Foam also repairs itself when damaged. It could drastically change robotics, making it more intelligent and interactive. In humans, touch enables people to manipulate objects and operate effectively in unfamiliar environments. If the robot has this ability, the movement of the robot can be smoother, safer and more predictable. If robots of the future can detect humans and use the information they gain to infer human intentions, they can react faster, for example, and avoid harmful accidents with human contact. The perception intelligence of the robot to the environment, that is, the mobile robot can obtain the environmental information of the surrounding environment according to the sensors it carries, and extract the effective feature information in the environment to process and understand, and finally express it by establishing the model of the environment in which it is located. information about your environment. The environment perception technology of mobile robots is the premise of realizing autonomous robot positioning and navigation. Through effective perception of the surrounding environment, mobile robots can better perform basic tasks such as autonomous positioning, environmental exploration and autonomous navigation. Environmental perception technology is an important research content in the theory of autonomous behavior of intelligent robots, and has very important research significance. With the development of sensor technology, sensors have been fully used in mobile robots, which greatly improves the ability of intelligent mobile robots to obtain environmental information. Humans and higher animals have abundant sensory organs, which can sense external stimuli and obtain environmental information through vision, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. Robots can also obtain information about the surrounding environment through various sensors, and sensors play an important role in robots. Sensor technology fundamentally determines the development of robot environment perception technology. At present, the mainstream robot sensors include visual sensors, auditory sensors, tactile sensors, etc., and the fusion of multi-sensor information also determines the robot's ability to perceive environmental information. Robots mainly perceive the surrounding environment through sensors, but each sensor has its limitations, and a single sensor can only reflect part of the environmental information. In order to improve the effectiveness and stability of the entire system, multi-sensor information fusion has become an inevitable requirement. The mobile robots studied at this stage only have a simple perception ability, collect external environment information through sensors, and realize the positioning and navigation behavior of the robot through a simple mapping relationship. Intelligent mobile robots should not only have the ability to perceive the environment, but also have the ability to recognize, learn, and remember the environment. The focus of future research is on mobile robots with environmental cognition capabilities, using advanced means such as intelligent algorithms, and gradually accumulating knowledge through learning, so that mobile robots can complete more complex tasks.