Humanizing Artificial Touch: Skin, Sensing, and Structures

Humanizing Artificial Touch: Skin, Sensing, and Structures contains recent advances in artificial skin modelling and robotic tactile sensing technologies, integrating these in the structure of an artificial hand mimicking its important features. This book will give special treatment to the relationship between the artificial skin material and embedded tactile sensors, describing how artificial skin and embedded sensors can be designed and constructed using 3D printing technologies with case examples on how these were created for amputees achieve a more a natural and rich human-robot tactile interaction.

This book is oriented towards students, researchers, and clinical practitioners who are working in the design and construction of artificial hands for prosthetics and social robotics.

• Presents simulation and experimental analyses of artificial skin materials with lifelike features
• Introduces bio-inspired tactile sensors and neuromorphic tactile sensing methodologies
• Explores the construction of patient-specific artificial hands through 3D printing technologies

John-John Cabibihan is a Professor at the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, Qatar University, in Doha, Qatar. He received the Ph.D. degree in Bioengineering, with specialization in Biorobotics, from the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy, in 2007. Concurrent with his Ph.D. studies, he was accepted to the co-tutors PhD programme of the École Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay, France in 2004-2005, where he worked on soft materials at the Laboratoire de Mécanique et Technologie. In 2021, he completed the Venture Creation and Finance Programmes at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, UK. Dr. Cabibihan is an inventor in 20 patent families, has over 200 publications and 15 edited books. Dr. Cabibihan was a cofounding Assistant Editor and Editorial Board Member of the International Journal of Social Robotics. Over the years, his work has focused toward healthcare robotics, specifically in assistive and social robotics for the therapy of children with autism, lifelike prosthetics, bio-inspired tactile sensing, and human-robotic touch and gestures. His works were featured by Nature Materials, MIT Technology Review, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Popular Science, New Scientist, Discovery News, New York Magazine, among others.