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  • [ ♪INTRO ]

  • Robot designs have come a long way.

  • But there's one thing we haven't been able to give our mechanical creations: skin.

  • I mean, obviously we've been able to coat robots in plastics that look like skinor,

  • just enough like skin to be terrifying.

  • But a sensitive outer layer that really acts like skin has remained out of reach

  • until now, apparently.

  • Last week, scientists publishing in the journal Proceedings of the IEEE outlined how they

  • made the first autonomous robot with full-body skin.

  • Artificial skin is a holy grail of sorts for robotics because a better sense of touch could

  • help robots in a lot of ways.

  • They need to really feellike we doto excel at everything from maintaining balance

  • to performing delicate medical procedures.

  • But making skin isn't as simple as slapping on a bunch of sensors.

  • The skin itself needs to be tough but flexible, so it doesn't get in the robot's way.

  • And perhaps the biggest issue is computing power.

  • A large sheet of sensors produces an unbelievable amount of data.

  • Luckily, as the team explained in their paper, we're finally at a point where engineering

  • and computing can come together to make robot skin a reality.

  • The researchers started with individual hexagonalcellsmeasuring about 3 centimeters

  • across.

  • Each is packed with sensors that can detect things like temperature, pressure, and acceleration,

  • and can connect to up to four other sensors to form patches of artificial skin.

  • In all, the team was able to give a human-sized robot more than thirteen thousand sensors

  • without interfering with its ability to move about.

  • That was the easy part.

  • The real challenge was solving the data problem.

  • And they did that in a really cool way: by mimicking human skin.

  • Our skin has millions of sensors in it that can detect things like heat, vibration, and pressure.

  • And as amazing as these computers in our heads are, even they would be overloaded if all

  • of those sensors were continuously sending data.

  • That's why they don't.

  • Some feed information to our brain frequently, but others only send signals when something

  • changes dramatically.

  • And that is the thing the engineers mimicked.

  • Instead of having each sensor constantly feeding information to the central computer, they

  • designed sensors that only send signals when there's something important to share.

  • Thanks to its human-inspired skin, the team's humanoid robot was able to complete sensitive

  • physical tasks like sorting oranges based on their squishiness and giving people hugs.

  • The team has even integrated the cells into prosthetics to help people with spinal cord

  • injuries learn to walk again.

  • And they hope their robotic skin will eventually help all sorts of machines make sense of the

  • world around themso they can be even more useful to us.

  • In other news, new research in the journal Science Advances suggests modern reef-building

  • corals may have an ancient strategy to survive climate change.

  • Stony corals have been around since at least the Triassic, so they've survived a lot

  • in their time on Earth.

  • One way they did that was a process called rejuvenescence.

  • You see, what we think of as a coral is actually a big colony made up of countless little individual polyps.

  • Those are small, anemone-like creatures that build snug-fitting calcium carbonate skeletons around themselves.

  • And fossils suggest that when times get really tough, these polyps can shrink and hunker

  • down in smaller shelters.

  • It's thought that the shrinking cuts the polyp's energetic costs — a bit like moving

  • into a studio apartment to save on rent and utilities.

  • Then, the surviving polyp can grow again when conditions improve.

  • The only thing is, no one had ever seen this in a living coral.

  • Paleontologists had pieced together the idea from fossils of mini-polyps inside the skeletons of larger ones.

  • But since 2002, scientists working off the Mediterranean coast of Spain have been involved

  • in a huge coral monitoring project.

  • They've been keeping an eye on over 240 individual colonies of cushion coral and documenting

  • what happens to them year after year.

  • Each fall, they'd dive down and record any heat-induced damage with photos and sketches.

  • And at first, things seemed pretty bleak.

  • A lot of the corals died from the stress of unusually warm summer waters.

  • But as they kept taking their logs, it turned out many of the dead colonies were just mostly dead.

  • Extreme close-up photographs revealed tiny, living polyps hidden in their old skeletons.

  • And years after a major mortality event, these little survivors were able to regrow.

  • The scientists eventually saw at least some recovery in about 40% of the colonies that had seemed dead.

  • And 13% of them had returned to almost full health after a decade.

  • The time delay for recovery might be part of the reason why we haven't seen rejuvenescence in living corals before.

  • Either the colonies weren't monitored long enough after they seemed to die, or, if records

  • weren't precise, recovered colonies might have been mistaken for ones that were never damaged.

  • The authors think lots of different corals may ride out bad conditions this waythough,

  • to be fair, they only examined one species.

  • So we'll need to take a closer look at other corals to see if they can similarly bounce back.

  • And none of this lets us off the hook for anything.

  • Coral reefs are still struggling, and they will continue to struggle if we keep filling

  • the oceans with trash and dialing up the planet's thermostat.

  • But findings like this give us additional hope that if we do clean up our act, these

  • wonderful animals might be able to flourish again someday.

  • [Hank] And that's not all the news I have to share today!

  • We here at SciShow have an announcement as well:

  • Our psych channel has a new host: It's Anthony Brown!

  • And we're really excited to have you.

  • Anthony is a man of many talents: performer, producer, musician, and beatboxer

  • [Anthony] Oh yeah.

  • [ANTHONY STARTS BEATBOXING]

  • [Hank] Oh, uh, I feel the flow coming on

  • Ah, Ah, Ok An-tho-ny is our new psych host

  • He's got loys of talents of which to boast He comes from Wisconsin, the land of cheese

  • And he'll be breaking down all of the psychology He'll be joining the channel with me and Brit

  • He's going to be awesome at hosting it

  • So let's say Hi to our new Psych MC And welcome him to the SciShow family!

  • [Anthony stops beatboxing]

  • [Hank] Wow

  • Am I fired?

  • Will I ever live that down?

  • Or is this

  • [Anthony] It was pretty good!

  • [Hank] Anyhow, Anthony's first episode will be airing next week over on YouTube.com/SciShowPsych.

  • So if you aren't subscribed to the channel, now is a good time to check it out!

  • Thanks for joining us, Anthony.

  • [Anthony] Thank you!

  • [ ♪OUTRO ]

[ ♪INTRO ]

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