A Little Nebraska in the News

Cyborgs in Nebraska

The old feeder likes to look for stories about Nebraska in the foreign and US overseas press. I ran across this in the Voice of America (VOA) News, a story about UNL researcher Dr. Ravi Saraf making a scientific breakthrough:

Scientists have figured out how to give robots a sense of touch nearly as sensitive as that of humans. They have created an electronic skin that can distinguish extremely subtle texture differences far beyond the capabilities of current robotic sensing devices. One area where the technology would be useful is in surgery.

Dr. Ravi F. Saraf of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, is into nano-tech (or meso-tech). The field of nanotechnology is the unacknowledged bastard son of chemistry and physics who was sent away to engineering school. This stuff is pretty sci-fi, and is dimly viewed as a scary no-no technology by some folks.

Some other odd bits of research by Dr. Saraf also seem to be directed towards creating a cyborg, or cybernetic organism. Who said UNL was a cow college?