BAMH features a silicone fingertip that is connected to a machine about the size of a small suitcase.
It works by stimulating four key sensory nerve cells or touch receptors in the skin, giving the patient a “realistic sense of touch”, according to the team.
The researchers are looking to recruit at least 10 people experiencing loss of sensation for a clinical trial in the next few months to understand more about how the sense of touch degrades over time.
Professor Helge Wurdemann, chairman of robotics at UCL, said: “we want to understand (if) can we detect, over some time a degradation in (touch) sensitivity.
“And then we want to feed that data back to the clinician to then understand if they can, maybe adopt their therapy in order to slow down the loss in (touch) perception.”
The researchers said this technology also has the potential to be used in robot-assisted surgeries which could allow doctors to evaluate the type of tissue they are interacting with, to determine if these are cancerous.
Outside of healthcare, they said more advanced versions of the device, which could include gloves that could provide “full sensation in your hands”, could help in decommissioning nuclear waste, where large robots are often used to operate in hazardous areas.
Prof Wurdemann added: “If you need to disassemble radioactive materials, a realistic sense of touch could be crucial to sorting out the different components.”
The team presented its technology at the British Science Festival held at the University of East London.
