A preprint from , and the robot maker describes a touch-sensing reflex for humanoid robots. When body sensors detect harmful contact, a withdrawal pose goes straight to the motors in about 10 milliseconds, faster than the robot's learned whole-body policy, which updates 50 times a second.
On a humanoid, the authors report that the reflex cut the first peak of contact force by about a third compared with the same reflex delayed by 20 milliseconds. They also show the robot walking over obstacles guided by touch in its feet.
The results are the authors' own, from one robot model, and the preprint is not peer reviewed.
Source: arxiv.org
Limits
Authors' own results on one robot; not peer reviewed.