Overview
- Researchers at Queen Mary University of London and University College London report evidence of human remote touch in sand-based tests presented at the IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning.
- Participants located a concealed cube before contact with 70.7% precision within the model-defined detectable range.
- A UR5 robot with a tactile sensor and an LSTM model sometimes sensed at greater distances but produced more false positives, yielding about 40% overall precision.
- Physical modeling indicates human sensitivity to minute sand displacements approaches the theoretical threshold for detecting mechanical reflections in granular media.
- The team highlights applications for assistive tools, archaeological probing, and exploration of granular terrains such as Martian soil.