NAIROBI, Kenya- In a remarkable fusion of biology and technology, Japanese scientists have successfully attached living skin tissue to robotic faces, enabling them to “smile.”
This achievement promises significant advancements in cosmetics and medicine.
Researchers at the University of Tokyo have been at the forefront of this innovation, growing human skin cells into the shape of a face and using embedded ligament-like attachments to pull it into a wide grin.
Lead researcher Shoji Takeuchi and his team have made a significant leap towards creating more realistic robots.
“By attaching these actuators and anchors, it became possible to manipulate living skin for the first time,” Takeuchi explained.
This smiling robot, showcased in a study published by Cell Reports Physical Science, is the result of a decade-long research effort by Takeuchi’s lab on integrating biological and artificial machines.
Living tissue offers numerous benefits over traditional materials like metals and plastics. Takeuchi highlighted the energy efficiency of biological brains and muscles, as well as skin’s remarkable ability to repair itself.
These advantages make living tissue an ideal candidate for developing more life-like and functional robots.
The researchers’ next goal is to incorporate additional elements into the lab-grown skin, such as a circulatory system and nerves, potentially leading to safer testing platforms for cosmetics and drugs.
One of the challenges that remain is overcoming the eerie or unsettling feelings that robots evoke when they appear almost, but not quite, human—a phenomenon known as the uncanny valley.
“There’s still a bit of that creepiness to it,” Takeuchi acknowledged. However, he believes that creating robots from the same materials as humans and enabling them to exhibit the same expressions could be key to bridging this gap.
