New Nano Device Can "Feel" - Page 2

In a demonstration for the Science paper, Saraf and Maheshwari were able to decipher fine features such as wrinkles in Abraham Lincoln's clothing on a penny and the letters TY in "liberty."

Saraf sees various important uses for his freaky self-assembling electro-nano feeler thing. "Touch is a sensation they want in robotics because to tell the difference between a cube and a sphere, an ordinary robot takes forever to do it with vision because it has to look from all directions," he said. "And then, of course, the big thing for the military is to maneuver in darkness. Similar to a blind person, [with this device] you can touch and find your way through."

But he is most "excited about this because I want to try to decipher cancer at the single-cell level," Saraf said. "In some cases, cancer tissues are harder than normal tissues, if you take a tissue sample, put it on a glass slide and press on it, you would be able to ["feel"] a cluster of just a few (cancer) cells... Surgeons will be able to know if they have taken out all of the cancer. If they haven't, they'll know where to make the next cut."

Professor Saraf told the BBC he would now like to see if he could create a device that can detect temperature changes as well as texture, enabling it to even more closely mimic human sensation.

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