Robot covered with “living” and realistic skin displays dimpled smile

A robot with soft, pink skin looks at the camera with glassy eyes before pulling its face into a dimpled smile.

Although it may look like something out of a nightmare, this little robot covered in living skin could represent a breakthrough in the quest to make robots more human-like. It’s the work of researchers in Japan, who say they have discovered a new way to attach living skin tissue to a mechanical robotic surface.

The team was led by Professor Shoji Takeuchi from the University of Tokyo’s Institute of Industrial Science. Previously, he developed a “living” robotic skin using collagen, a fibrous protein in human skin, and human dermal fibroblasts, the main cell type in connective tissue, that could be applied to a robotic finger and bend without breaking.

For their new technique, the team took inspiration from the natural structure of human skin ligaments to create “anchors” using a collagen gel applied to small V-shaped holes on the robot’s surface. The new method provides “a more continuous and durable fixation”, says Takeuchi.

Takeuchi is not alone in his efforts to make robots more human-like.

Ameca, often called “the world’s most advanced humanoid robot,” employs artificial intelligence to talk to people and react appropriately to their responses. One of the things that makes it look more realistic than other robots is its eyes, says Will Jackson, founder and CEO of Engineered Arts Ltd, the company behind Ameca.

“The eyes are the windows to the soul. We read each other’s emotions through eye contact,” Jackson told CNN earlier this year, adding that with a “finite amount of movement” available in the robot’s head, the eyes provide “the most expressive capability.”

Unlike the 3.5 million industrial robots already working behind the scenes in industries like automobile and electronics manufacturing, humanoids like Ameca, or Sophia and Grace from Hanson Robotics, are intended for people-interacting roles like hospitality, healthcare or education.

Currently, they don’t have a wide range of movement for their facial expressions, creating a “strange valley” effect, a phenomenon that can make people uncomfortable with things that try to look human but fail.

“Realistic facial expressions increase the robot’s ability to communicate and interact with humans more naturally and effectively,” says Takeuchi. “This is particularly important in applications like healthcare, where empathy and emotional connection can significantly impact patient care.”

Building robots that can feel

The research, details of which were published in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science this month, is an exciting development for the field of robotics, says Yifan Wang, assistant professor in the school of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Wang’s work focuses on “soft robots” that mimic biological creatures.

The skin, the largest organ in the human body, is vital for sensory perception, sensing temperature, humidity and textures of objects, says Wang. “This type of feature in biological systems is currently, with artificial robots, still very difficult to achieve,” he adds.

But research at the University of Tokyo enables a “hybrid solution” between the fields of soft and traditional robotics that is “very interesting,” says Wang. Robots are often covered with a material made to resemble flesh, such as silicone, that is attached via adhesive, which can lead to the skin falling off or breaking, Wang says.

The new method, on the other hand, offers a way to “adhere the skin to a hard surface very well, so that it doesn’t come off easily and forms a very good interface between the hard and the soft,” he says.

For Wang, the most exciting implications of this research revolve around developments in “robots’ sensing capabilities.”

“Our human skin has these very delicate, high-density sensors on the surface, which currently cannot be achieved with some synthetic materials,” says Wang. “(But) if we use biological skin on these traditional robots, we can achieve a similar type of sensing of different characteristics.”

Takeuchi and his team hope to add more sensory functions in the next phase of research, “to make the skin more responsive to environmental stimuli,” he says.

However, ensuring the consistency and quality of living skin may not be so easy, says Takeuchi.

So another part of his research is exploring how to create a robotic skin vascular system, with a network of vessels and veins that transport blood and lymphatic fluids throughout the body. This can provide the necessary supply of nutrients to maintain skin health over time. This would give the skin more moisture, “increasing its durability and longevity,” says Takeuchi.

Something like this “would need a lot of work in terms of engineering,” says Wang. But if they succeed, it would give humanoids the ability to look and feel like people in the future.

Meet the new generation of humanoid robots that should go to space